Re: [RFC PATCH] docs/about/build-platforms: Refine the distro support policy

[Thomas Huth]

On 17/02/2023 16.06, Daniel P. Berrangé wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 17, 2023 at 02:26:31PM +0100, Thomas Huth wrote:
...
> I'm also not so comfortable dropping the only version of SLES that we
> explicitly target, when we don't know when their new major release
> will arrive.

Let's hope that the next major version will show up at least five years 
after the previous one ... but what if it takes many more years? Do we want 
to support very old long term distros for "almost forever"?

Also, should we maybe at least limit the time to 5 years? Otherwise, if 
openSUSE 16 gets released 5 years after v15, we have to support v15 for 7 
years in total due to the "two more years" rule...

> If we allow compilers, libraries to be bumped, then someone stuck on
> RHEL-8 has a significant task to build their own toolchain/libraries
> in order to work with QEMU still. If we only allow python modules to
> be bumped, the solution is just a pip install / virtualenv away.

Honestly, being a Python ignorant, I'm more comfortable with "./configure && 
make && make install" instead of messing up my system with pip like I did in 
the past ... but I guess it's ok if it is properly done automatically under 
the hood with a venv ... I'll get used to it ;-)

 Thomas