[Python-Dev] Drop support for old unsupported FreeBSD and Linux kernels? (original) (raw)

Nick Coghlan ncoghlan at gmail.com
Fri Jan 19 23:16:43 EST 2018

On 19 January 2018 at 16:04, Nathaniel Smith <njs at pobox.com> wrote:

On Thu, Jan 18, 2018 at 12:27 PM, Victor Stinner <victor.stinner at gmail.com> wrote:

CPython still has compatibility code for Linux 2.6, whereas the support of Linux 2.6.x ended in August 2011, longer than 6 years ago. Should we also drop support for old Linux kernels? If yes, which ones? The Linux kernel has LTS version, the oldest is Linux 3.2 (support will end in May, 2018).

Linux kernel support: https://www.kernel.org/category/releases.html RHEL 5 uses 2.6.28, and still has "extended life cycle support" until 2020, but I guess no-one should be running Python 3.7 on that. CentOS 6 and RHEL 6 use 2.6.32, and their EOL is also 2020 (or 2024 for RHEL 6 with extended life cycle support). Redhat does ship and support 3.6 on CentOS/RHEL 6 through their "software collections" product, and presumably is planning to do the same for 3.7. It is a little surprising to see a Redhat employee suggest dropping support for RHEL 6. Hopefully you know what you're doing :-)

Red Hat's kernel version numbers describe the oldest code in that kernel, rather than the newest. So if Red Hat customers want to run a new version of CPython on an older version of RHEL, and the new version of CPython needs a particular kernel feature, then that turns into a backport request for that kernel capability (e.g. while there were multiple drivers for Red Hat backporting the getrandom() syscall the RHEL 7's 3.10 kernel, CPython was one of them: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1330000)

So I think it makes sense to base python-dev's Linux kernel support policy on the community LTS streams for the Linux kernel - if a commercial Python vendor chooses to go beyond those dates they can, just as they may go beyond python-dev's nominal support dates for CPython itself.

Cheers, Nick.

-- Nick Coghlan | ncoghlan at gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia

More information about the Python-Dev mailing list