The support status of CE and 1.12 is not clearly listed anywhere

[euank]

• I searched existing issues before opening this one

Expected behavior

The support status of all versions of Docker CE and open-source Docker prior to CE should be clearly displayed in the documentation.

Actual behavior

The actual status of 1.12 and exact timeline for support for anything other than CSE and EE is murky.

Steps to reproduce the behavior

The question I started out trying to answer is whether Docker 1.12 is still considered supported in any way. I could not find a clear answer.

I am aware of the Maintenance Lifecycle docs page, but it only talks about the "Commercially Supported Engine", not docker 1.12.

In addition, there's not a convenient chart for finding the support status of CE versions. I'm aware that it's 4 month periods, giving 1 month to upgrade.
However, CE versions are not being released exactly 3 months apart, and it's not obvious whether that means the previous version is now supported fo 1 month from the new version's launch date, or still 4 months from its launch date.

The documentation should have a clear, linkable, concise presentation of the support status for all versions of Docker so that users don't have to scramble in the case of a security vulnerability.

I would be happy to be proven wrong about this if there is a page or announcement which makes this all clear. Thanks!

[seemethere]

Thanks for posting this question!

Docker 1.12 is no longer receiving updates and you should update to Docker 17.09.

You're correct that some CE releases have slipped a little. We're working on making sure they arrive promptly.

Also pinging @mstanleyjones to help update docs to be clearer about this. The best resource, as of now, is probably the original blog post.

[euank]

Just to make sure the second part of my question doesn't get lost: CE versions also have some uncertainty.

As a specific example:
17.03-ce was released on 2017-03-02
17.06-ce was released on 2017-06-28

Does that mean 17.03 was supported for 4 months (until 2017-07-02, giving 4 days to migrate from .03 to .06), or was 17.03 supported up until 2017-07-28 (1 month from the release of 06)?

Regardless the answer, a clear chart answering that question too would be greatly appreciated, not just a docs update to make sure 1.12's fate is clear.

[mdlinville]

@euank We will clear up the confusion in the docs, but a stable version of Docker CE is patched and updated for one month after the next CE stable version is released.

[euank]

I'm unable to re-open this issue, but I think the support status of 1.12 and 1.13 should also be clearly described somewhere on the website.