Re: minimum curl version effectively changed

From: brian m. carlson <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net>
Date: Oct 10, 2024, 21:52 UTC
Message-ID: <ZwhMmGt0kZvaSzSL@tapette.crustytoothpaste.net>
In-Reply-To: <CAOO-Oz1KhFcyErVx1Qb142PtPJS=UpgSD-FacckqNS4_okAtFQ@mail.gmail.com>

On 2024-10-10 at 21:30:04, Alejandro R. Sedeño wrote:

Show 7 quoted lines

> I have a patch I plan to send in tomorrow that will properly
> conditionalize using the symbol on versions of curl that have it, and
> emitting a warning otherwise. It will also follow up with some
> corrections to errors in git-curl-compat.h.
> 
> I don't think a new feature should unilaterally change the minimum
> requirements of git without some announcement and forethought.

We already have a platform support policy, which guides our behaviour here, and it was discussed very recently. It says this:

  Uses versions of dependencies which are generally accepted as stable and
  supportable, e.g., in line with the version used by other long-term-support
  distributions

No major Linux distributions are still using such an old version of libcurl. CentOS 7 is dead, and we don't typically support extended long-term support because it comes at a cost, and it's not fair to Git developers to require them to pay for a secure system to test against. I don't know of any other major OS which is providing support for such an old version of curl either. Usually the BSDs have a much shorter life span for versions, for example.

So I think the oldest supported version we're going to be willing to accept is in a clone of RHEL 8, which would be curl 7.61. It's certainly a mistake on our part that we neglected to update INSTALL accordingly, but it's not a mistake that we unconditionally added support for a feature from over a decade ago.

-- 
brian m. carlson (they/them or he/him)
Toronto, Ontario, CA