[Python-Dev] Supported versions of OpenSSL (original) (raw)

Cory Benfield cory at lukasa.co.uk
Mon Aug 29 12:33:05 EDT 2016

On 29 Aug 2016, at 04:09, M.-A. Lemburg <mal at egenix.com> wrote:

On 28.08.2016 22:40, Christian Heimes wrote: ... I like to reduce the maintenance burden and list of supported OpenSSL versions ASAP. OpenSSL has deprecated 0.9.8 and 1.0.0 last year. 1.0.1 will reach EOL by the end of this year, https://www.openssl.org/policies/releasestrat.html . However OpenSSL 0.9.8 is still required for some platforms (OSX). ... For upcoming 3.6 I would like to limit support to 1.0.2+ and require 1.0.2 features for 3.7. ... Hmm, that last part would mean that Python 3.7 will no longer compile on e.g. Ubuntu 14.04 LTS which uses OpenSSL 1.0.1 as default version. Since 14.04 LTS is supported until 2019, I think it would be better to only start requiring 1.0.2 in Python 3.8.

Can someone explain to me why this is a use-case we care about?

The nature of a stable distribution is that all the packages are guaranteed to work together. Once you start compiling your own software, you are out in the cold: you are no longer covered by that guarantee. Why, then, should someone compiling a version of Python that was barely conceived when Ubuntu 14.04 was released expect that they can compile it from source using only dependencies available in their mainline distribution?

I absolutely understand wanting to support Ubuntu 14.04 for any release of Python that already compiles on Ubuntu 14.04: that makes sense. But new releases should not be shackled to what is in LTS releases of operating systems. If it were, a more coherent argument would be that we cannot drop 0.9.8 support in any Python released before the middle of 2017 because RHEL 5 ships it, and we will not be able to require OpenSSL 1.0.2 until almost 2021 because RHEL 6 ships 1.0.1. After all, why does Ubuntu 14.04 get privileged over RHEL? Both are supported LTS releases, after all.

I don’t believe that the Python dev team has ever promised that future versions of Python will compile on a given LTS release. Am I mistaken?

While I’m here, I should note that Ubuntu 14.04 goes EOL in 2019, while OpenSSL 1.0.1 loses support from upstream at the end of this year, which is probably a good reason to stop supporting it in new Python versions. OpenSSL 1.0.0 and 0.9.8 are already unsupported by upstream.

Cory

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