[PATCH v2 6/8] ci: switch away from EOL'd Ubuntu version in linux-exotic

From: Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im>
Date: Oct 9, 2026, 11:32 UTC
Message-ID: <20261009-pks-ci-housekeeping-v2-6-6863d58ef691@pks.im>
In-Reply-To: <20261009-pks-ci-housekeeping-v2-0-6863d58ef691@pks.im>

The "linux-exotic" job still uses Ubuntu 20.04, which is end of life nowadays and starting to show some cracks. Switch it over to use the "latest" tag instead so that we don't have to constantly update it anymore.

Now arguably, this reduces test coverage for old versions of Ubuntu. But "latest" at least points to the most up-to-date LTS release of Ubuntu, compared to the "rolling" tag that uses the latest release regardless of the LTS status. So while "latest" and "rolling" are the same right now, that's not always the case.

Furthermore, we have other jobs that test with ancient versions of Linux, like for example the one that uses AlmaLinux 8 (2021, originally tracking RHEL 8 from 2019) or Debian 12 (2023).

Note that this also requires us to switch away from GCC 8, which is not supported by Ubuntu 26.04 anymore. Instead we simply use the default version of GCC.

Signed-off-by: Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im>
---
 .github/workflows/main.yml | 4 +---
 .gitlab-ci.yml             | 4 +---
 2 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)

diff --git a/.github/workflows/main.yml b/.github/workflows/main.yml
index d7a301ec98..5b772dab55 100644
--- a/.github/workflows/main.yml
+++ b/.github/workflows/main.yml
@@ -409,9 +409,7 @@ jobs:
           image: ubuntu:rolling
           cc: clang
         - jobname: linux-exotic
-          image: ubuntu:20.04
-          cc: gcc
-          cc_package: gcc-8
+          image: ubuntu:latest
         - jobname: linux-breaking-changes
           cc: gcc
           image: ubuntu:rolling
diff --git a/.gitlab-ci.yml b/.gitlab-ci.yml
index 27a16ed086..de40434ae3 100644
--- a/.gitlab-ci.yml
+++ b/.gitlab-ci.yml
@@ -43,9 +43,7 @@ test:linux:
         image: ubuntu:rolling
         CC: clang
       - jobname: linux-exotic
-        image: ubuntu:20.04
-        CC: gcc
-        CC_PACKAGE: gcc-8
+        image: ubuntu:latest
       - jobname: linux-breaking-changes
         image: ubuntu:rolling
         CC: gcc

-- 
2.56.0.170.g584c36229d.dirty