On Sat, Jan 18, 2020 at 07:54:18AM +0100, Markus Armbruster wrote: > John Snow <[email protected]> writes: > > On 1/17/20 2:07 AM, Markus Armbruster wrote: > >> John Snow <[email protected]> writes: [...] > >>> This problem has bitten me *many* times. I'm wondering if there's a > >>> prescription that isn't just "Wait until we can stipulate 3.6+". > >> > >> No clue. > >> > >> 3.5 EOL is scheduled for 2020-09-13. > >> https://devguide.python.org/#status-of-python-branches > >> > >> We support 3.5 because we support Debian 9. > >> > >> We'd normally drop support for Debian 9 two years after Debian 10, > >> i.e. July 2021. Assuming Debian supports it that far. Whether they can > >> truly support Python 3.5 after uptstream EOL seems doubtful. > >> > > > > We should decide whether we consider Debian LTS to be adequately > > supported, yes-or-no. > > > > We should use a rule of "two years after successor, or End-of-Support, > > whichever comes first." > > Yes. > > > For Debian, is end of support three years after it comes out, or is it > > when the LTS is EOL? > > We need to define end-of-support for Debian: is it Debian proper or is > it Debian LTS? > > <https://wiki.debian.org/DebianOldStable>: > > Q) How long will security updates be provided? > > The security team tries to support a stable distribution for about > one year after the next stable distribution has been released, > except when another stable distribution is released within this > year. It is not possible to support three distributions; supporting > two simultaneously is already difficult enough. > > <https://wiki.debian.org/LTS>: > > Debian Long Term Support (LTS) is a project to extend the lifetime > of all Debian stable releases to (at least) 5 years. Debian LTS is > not handled by the Debian security team, but by a separate group of > volunteers and companies interested in making it a success. > > Thus the Debian LTS team takes over security maintenance of the > various releases once the Debian Security team stops its work.
As Debian LTS is maintained by a separate group, I interpret "Debian EOL" as not including LTS. Supporting Debian 9 in 2020 is already being a burden. Supporting it until mid-2021 seems pointless. > > Debian 10 "Buster" was released in July 2019. Debian 9 "Stretch" will > receive security updates from Debian until mid 2020, i.e. just about > when Python 3.5 reaches EOL. LTS will attempt to support it until June > 2022. > > I think we should give ourselves a bit more flexibility than the > categorical "Support for the previous major version will be dropped 2 > years after the new major version is released." At some point, the cost > of supporting old hosts exceeds the utility. We should face this > tradeoff. Agreed. -- Eduardo
