Re: [RFC] dropping support for ancient versions of curl

From: Tom G. Christensen <tgc@jupiterrise.com>
Date: Apr 6, 2017, 16:43 UTC
Message-ID: <ef64656b-12d7-a041-e1b9-ce83f8cbd2fc@jupiterrise.com>
In-Reply-To: <20170406092122.titsfyxpucj6xoe4@sigill.intra.peff.net>

On 06/04/17 11:21, Jeff King wrote:

Show 11 quoted lines

> On Wed, Apr 05, 2017 at 11:33:37AM +0200, Tom G. Christensen wrote:
>> I don't use the el3 and el4 versions much any more and el5 use will also
>> drop of now as I'm busy converting machines from el5 to el7.
>
> Thanks for sharing, that's a really interesting data point.
>
> I'm not quite sure what to take away from it, though. Either "yes,
> somebody really is using Git with antique versions of curl". Or "even
> the antique people are giving up el4, and it might be reasonable to
> start requiring curl >= 7.11.0".
>

I do not know of anyone who actually need to have the latest git on their el3 or el4 system, myself included. I'm not here to champion the inclusion of support for el3 and el4, there is no point. I kept git buildable on those platforms since I could do so with minimal effort and good testresults, but this was entirely for my own satisfaction.

I know of no users of the packages that I make available other than myself and my work place (only el5 and later, soon just el6 and later).

There is not currently any patches needed to use git on el5 with curl 7.15.5. The only thing not working out of the box in 2.12.2 would be the emacs integration.

If you must drop support for old curl releases then from my perspective the cutoff should be 7.19.7 at the latest since that is what ships with RHEL 6 and that is still supported by Red Hat. Other long term supported Linux releases may have different ideas, I wouldn't know.

-tgc