RFC: dropping official support for Debian 8 / Opensuse 42.3

RFC: dropping official support for Debian 8 / Opensuse 42.3

[Burton, Ross]

Hi,

Now that both Debian 8 and OpenSuse 42.3 are end-of-life and no longer
formally supported, we think it's time to drop them from the supported
distribution list.  Initially this involves removing them from the
SANITY_TESTED_DISTROS list in Poky, at some point during this cycle we
may remove those distributions from the Yocto Project autobuilder to
add more workers for other supported distributions.

It is expected that the next release will probably work on those two
distributions, there are no plans to do new and exciting things
dropping these unsupported distributions enables -- like increasing
the minimum Python version to 3.5 until after the 2.8 release in
October.

Please, if this impacts you, speak up now.

Ross

Re: RFC: dropping official support for Debian 8 / Opensuse 42.3

[akuster808]

On 7/17/19 1:37 PM, Burton, Ross wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Now that both Debian 8 and OpenSuse 42.3 are end-of-life and no longer
> formally supported, we think it's time to drop them from the supported
> distribution list.  Initially this involves removing them from the
> SANITY_TESTED_DISTROS list in Poky, at some point during this cycle we
> may remove those distributions from the Yocto Project autobuilder to
> add more workers for other supported distributions.
>
> It is expected that the next release will probably work on those two
> distributions, there are no plans to do new and exciting things
> dropping these unsupported distributions enables -- like increasing
> the minimum Python version to 3.5 until after the 2.8 release in
> October.
>
> Please, if this impacts you, speak up now.

+1
>
> Ross

Re: RFC: dropping official support for Debian 8 / Opensuse 42.3

[Adrian Bunk]

On Wed, Jul 17, 2019 at 09:37:31PM +0100, Burton, Ross wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Now that both Debian 8 and OpenSuse 42.3 are end-of-life and no longer
> formally supported, we think it's time to drop them from the supported
> distribution list.

Debian 8 is still LTS-supported for a year, unless there is urgency to 
drop support for it the right time for dropping would be after 2.8
(2.9 release and Debian 8 LTS EOL will both be in Q2 2020).

Should OpenSuse be dropped, or just the version upgraded to 15.1?

Fedora 28 is also unsupported (but will be the basis of CentOS 8).

> Initially this involves removing them from the
> SANITY_TESTED_DISTROS list in Poky, at some point during this cycle we
> may remove those distributions from the Yocto Project autobuilder to
> add more workers for other supported distributions.
> 
> It is expected that the next release will probably work on those two
> distributions, there are no plans to do new and exciting things
> dropping these unsupported distributions enables -- like increasing
> the minimum Python version to 3.5 until after the 2.8 release in
> October.

CentOS 7 is based on Fedora 19 from 2013.

This is the oldest currently supported distribution, and when to remove 
support for it (replacing it with the not yet existing CentOS 8) should
IMHO be part of this discussion.

>...
> Ross

cu
Adrian

-- 

       "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
        of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
       "Only a promise," Lao Er said.
                                       Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed

Re: RFC: dropping official support for Debian 8 / Opensuse 42.3

[Burton, Ross]

On Thu, 18 Jul 2019 at 07:04, Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de> wrote:
> > Now that both Debian 8 and OpenSuse 42.3 are end-of-life and no longer
> > formally supported, we think it's time to drop them from the supported
> > distribution list.
>
> Debian 8 is still LTS-supported for a year, unless there is urgency to
> drop support for it the right time for dropping would be after 2.8
> (2.9 release and Debian 8 LTS EOL will both be in Q2 2020).

I'm inclined to dropping 8 and just supporting 9 and 10.  We don't
*need* to exercise every distro.

> Should OpenSuse be dropped, or just the version upgraded to 15.1?

42.3 dropped.  15.1 should be it's replacement, yes.  This is already
being exercised on the autobuilder.

> Fedora 28 is also unsupported (but will be the basis of CentOS 8).

Good point, and we also don't have Fedora 30 in the list.  Again, this
is already being exercised on the autobuilder.

> CentOS 7 is based on Fedora 19 from 2013.
>
> This is the oldest currently supported distribution, and when to remove
> support for it (replacing it with the not yet existing CentOS 8) should
> IMHO be part of this discussion.

Centos 7 support is, I believe, already patchy - I think we mandate
the buildtools for that?  Any idea what the support plan for Centos 7
will be once 8 is released, whenever that is?

Ross

Re: RFC: dropping official support for Debian 8 / Opensuse 42.3

[Richard Purdie]

On Thu, 2019-07-18 at 12:31 +0100, Burton, Ross wrote:
> > CentOS 7 is based on Fedora 19 from 2013.
> > 
> > This is the oldest currently supported distribution, and when to
> > remove
> > support for it (replacing it with the not yet existing CentOS 8)
> > should
> > IMHO be part of this discussion.
> 
> Centos 7 support is, I believe, already patchy - I think we mandate
> the buildtools for that?  Any idea what the support plan for Centos 7
> will be once 8 is released, whenever that is?

There is some kind of official feed to add python 3.6 to it which we
use.

Cheers,

Richard

Re: RFC: dropping official support for Debian 8 / Opensuse 42.3

[Adrian Bunk]

On Thu, Jul 18, 2019 at 12:43:50PM +0100, Richard Purdie wrote:
> On Thu, 2019-07-18 at 12:31 +0100, Burton, Ross wrote:
> > > CentOS 7 is based on Fedora 19 from 2013.
> > > 
> > > This is the oldest currently supported distribution, and when to
> > > remove
> > > support for it (replacing it with the not yet existing CentOS 8)
> > > should
> > > IMHO be part of this discussion.
> > 
> > Centos 7 support is, I believe, already patchy - I think we mandate
> > the buildtools for that?  Any idea what the support plan for Centos 7
> > will be once 8 is released, whenever that is?
> 
> There is some kind of official feed to add python 3.6 to it which we
> use.

Python is only a small part of the picture.

What I would be interested in would be to get rid of the 
ever-growing number of hacks and patches for supporting
the ancient gcc 4.8 in CentOS 7.

With support for Debian 8 removed, CentOS 7 will be two gcc major
versions behind all other supported host distributions.

Remember the nettle problems immediately before Yocto 2.7 was released, 
the root cause was a (bogus) workaround for supporting hosts with gcc < 5.

> Cheers,
> 
> Richard

cu
Adrian

-- 

       "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
        of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
       "Only a promise," Lao Er said.
                                       Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed