[tor-bugs] #15578 [Tor Browser]: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS is EOL April 2015

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#15578: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS is EOL April 2015
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     Reporter:           |      Owner:  tbb-team
  mikeperry              |     Status:  new
         Type:  defect   |  Milestone:
     Priority:  normal   |    Version:
    Component:  Tor      |   Keywords:  tbb-gitian, TorBrowserTeam201504,
  Browser                |  AffectsTails
   Resolution:           |  Parent ID:
Actual Points:           |
       Points:           |
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Comment (by intrigeri):

 Replying to [ticket:15578 mikeperry]:
 > I think my preferred option long-term is to switch us to Debian guest VM
 images, but it looks like the only way to do that is to also switch to
 using a sketch python-vm-builder fork completed as a Summer of Code
 project way back in 2009: https://wiki.debian.org/VMBuilder

 I don't see any RFP (request for package) asking to get python-vm-builder
 in Debian on https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?package=wnpp.
 Of course, just asking likely won't be enough, but if we don't even ask,
 certainly it won't ever happen :) Shall I file a RFP bug there?

 Also, it seems that vmbuilder does something very similar to live-build,
 so it might be worth looking into it.

 Replying to [comment:1 gk]:
 > I'd be inclined to argue Debian old-stable users (i.e. people using
 Wheezy then) should upgrade to stable

 Note that Debian oldstable is supported for a full year after a new stable
 is out. So users should, and will upgrade, sure, but not necessarily right
 now: that's what the transition period is for, and I doubt we can force
 users to go through the upgrade exactly when we want it. If we try to
 force it, I'm afraid that the end-result, for many Debian users, would
 simply be "what?! Tor Browser is broken", which isn't very nice UX, even
 with awesome blog posts explaining them (in English) why they should
 upgrade their OS.

 > as I can't imagine we want to start switching to old stable for building
 our Linux packages

 Given Wheezy is pretty solid a release, supported for a full more year
 (and probably longer, as it seems likely that the LTS effort will apply to
 Wheezy too), this wouldn't seem _that_ crazy an option to me.

 It at least would do the first migration step, away from an unsupported
 Ubuntu release, to using Debian for the build VMs. And in a year, once
 Wheezy is officially deprecated (the LTS effort is mostly focussed on
 server use cases in practice), then we can definitely stop supporting
 Wheezy users, and then we can use Jessie VMs to build Tor Browser.

 Replying to [comment:3 mikeperry]:
 > Unfortunately, I think the Tails people will not be able to use our
 builds if we switch to 12.04 before they switch to Jessy.

 Indeed, that's (unfortunately) very likely. Thanks for keeping the Tails
 usecase in mind!

 But perhaps it would be good to check before giving up, if it's cheap:
 Wheezy has glibc 2.13, Precise has 2.15 -- the delta perhaps isn't that
 big => maybe there's no new symbol introduced in 2.13..2.15 that Tor
 Browser builds would pick up? It might be, in the end, that it's only
 about one symbol or two, and then perhaps a thin compatibility layer hack,
 like the bitcoin folks have done, could be an acceptable workaround for a
 year?

 (BTW, I'm pretty sure we'll release Tails based on Jessie by the end of
 the year, but I doubt it'll happen before November.)

--
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/15578#comment:4>
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