request to add a stretch build for go1.14rc1

[leighmcculloch]

Similar to #296.

Context

The Go 1.14rc1 image was recently added which is great, but it was only added with a Debian buster variant. While buster is the current stable release, it only moved to stable on July 6th 2019, with stretch moving to oldstable status. oldstable releases like stretch will continue to receive security updates for one year (ref) which means they're still a very valid Debian release to use up until July 2020.

Problem

It can be easier for many applications to be updated with new versions of Go than to update versions of Debian. It will take time for everyone to update applications and their dependencies to be compatible with buster. During that period an official Go 1.14 isn't available to folks who are not yet ready to upgrade from stretch, but could be running Go 1.14 on production workloads.

Speaking specifically to my own situation, I'm attempting to use Go 1.14 for stellar/go, but I'm still working through a move to buster.

Proposal / Request

While the stretch debian release is still supported with security updates could we support a Go 1.14 image on stretch to give folks more time to transition to buster while being able to adopt Go 1.14 and run it in development and production workloads?

[tianon]

Yeah, I suppose this is fair, but with the strong warning that time is definitely running out: https://wiki.debian.org/DebianReleases#Production_Releases

(We don't have an exact date for the security team to no longer support stretch officially, but it's definitely coming sometime this year and it doesn't seem unreasonable to assume this might be the last Go release before it happens. 😅)

[leighmcculloch]

@tianon Thanks! I agree, the clock is ticking. Go releases run on a 6 month schedule and so Go 1.15 beta is likely to come out in June 2020 just before or around the same time as the 1 year mark for stretch when theoretically its support might be discontinued. So this might be the last release, maybe second last? 🤞

[leighmcculloch]

@tianon It has occurred to me too that Debian LTS means that Stretch will continue to get support beyond the Debian Security team window of support.

Is there an official stance on which versions of which OSes are supported and for how long in these images?

[tianon]

There's not an official stance, although it is definitely relevant that LTS in Debian doesn't mean quite the same thing it does over in Ubuntu, for example. In Debian, it's a limited set of supported architectures with best-effort updates applied (and from what I've understood, priority for more popular packages and/or security updates), and that funding for LTS has been an issue heatedly discussed in the past.

Previously we've been willing to consider keeping Debian LTS suites for existing versions, but we don't typically add new versions on LTS suites unless there are upstream-forced circumstances (for example, pypy's upstream binary releases forced us to stay on Debian Jessie longer than we wanted to).

[leighmcculloch]

That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for taking the time to knowledge share how it works. Thanks!