Alpine 3.4 reaches its EOL on 2018-05-01, how to proceed with `alpine` tags aliasing `alpine3.4`?

[michael-k]

Many official images have *-alpine tags that alias *-alpine3.4. The reason are stability issues/guarantees as discussed in docker-library/golang#131 and the many linked issues.

As https://github.com/bmw pointed out in docker-library/python#265 Alpine 3.4 will reach its end of life on 2018-05-01. Are there plans to deal with this? I see the following options (are there more?):

• If *-alpine is an alias for *-alpine3.4, make it an alias for
  • *-alpine3.5.
  • *-alpine3.7.
  • *-alpine3.8 (which should be released at about the same time).
• Since *-alpineX.Y should be used by anyone aiming for stability, use *-alpine as a rolling tag.
• Drop the *-alpine tags.

Is any one of them preferred?

---

Progress list:

• eggdrop: Alpine 3.4 end-of-life  eggheads/eggdrop-docker#8 (comment)
• node: Added multiple versions of alpine linux nodejs/docker-node#725 (comment), Generate Images for multiple versions of Alpine nodejs/docker-node#473
• php: Remove Alpine 3.4 variants (EOL) php#650, Update base images to Debian Stretch and Alpine 3.6 php#504, Add stretch and alpine 3.7 variants for 5.6, 7.0 and 7.1. php#646
• python: Remove Alpine 3.4 variants (EOL) python#290, Tags alpine and *-alpine should refer to latest alpine release 3.7, not 3.4 python#265
• registry: Add multiversion and multiarch support (no more committed binaries) distribution/distribution-library-image#74, Security fix: Update alpine base image to 3.7 distribution/distribution-library-image#64, Security fix: Update alpine base image to 3.6 distribution/distribution-library-image#62
• ruby: Add 2.3-alpine3.7, remove all Alpine 3.4 variants ruby#210, Create different package names based on Alpine version ruby#81

[tianon]

The *-alpineX.Y tags are fairly recent, but given that we've managed to get them on most of the base language stacks (where Alpine version changes have the biggest effect), I'm partial to making *-alpine tags a rolling tag. 👍

(I think we have a few places that's not doing yet, like node, but I believe they're working on updating that?)

For services like memcached, the base Alpine version doesn't matter as much, so those don't even have *-alpineX.Y tags.

[tianon]

Also, once Alpine 3.4 is officially EOL, we should start removing *-alpine3.4 tags everywhere.

[tianon]

From what I can find, the full list of images that still have tags FROM alpine:3.4 is:

• eggdrop
• node
• php
• python
• registry
• ruby

[vielmetti]

eggdrop has a change in the works, per eggheads/eggdrop-docker#8 (comment)

[vielmetti]

The open issue for php is docker-library/php#504

[tianon]

registry: distribution/distribution-library-image#74, distribution/distribution-library-image#64, distribution/distribution-library-image#62

[tianon]

(Updated the OP with a proper checkbox-list so we get issue progress indications from GitHub)

[tianon]

Looks like node:6-alpine and registry:2.6/registry:2.5 are all that's left here, so I'm going to close (in favor of those specific images' issue trackers where these are already more appropriately tracked).