Re: [squid-users] Squid 3.4.5 is available

From: Amos Jeffries <squid3_at_treenet.co.nz>
Date: Wed, 07 May 2014 01:37:37 +1200

On 6/05/2014 4:07 a.m., Amm wrote:
>
> Squid is very widely used software and this move may break lots of
> things for many administrators.

Please note that we have already had several distributors using old
versions of the popular OS to successfully build the updated 3.4
packages and confirm that there were no problems doing so. This was a
basic criteria for doing it at all.

Security updates are, and will continue to be, distributed in patches
that can be applied on older releases without upgrading the whole of Squid.

These changes only have any *potential* affect for administrators
attempting to build the latest Squids' on very old systems outside the
relevant official OS distributors support channels.

>
> autoconf, automake, gcc may depend on other softwares and so even those
> other softwares may also require update. Updating those softwares may
> also break other softwares which depend on older versions.
>
> So its going to be huge task for administrator.

As you say this is true of any software being back-ported to a vendors
LTE disribution. Squid is no exception. This announcement is just a
notification that the bar is being moved slightly from 6 years ago.

PS. minimum version of autoconf has actually already been 2.63 for that
entire time without anyone noticing.

>
> I am also surprised that this change (a major one in my opinion) was
> made in minor-minor release.
>
> As Martin suggested may be this change should be pushed to Squid 4.x
> major version.
>
> So please consider the request.

Considered. Unfortunately we have to balance a known guarantee of build
failure on several newly released OS - which will affect Squid ability
to be used there over the coming years as those systems gain popularity,
against a risk that the group of administrators choosing to stick with
very old systems (declining in size over time) will have some trouble.

Also many features current Squid offer over older versions are grounded
in the OS on which it is built and/or runs. The benefits of the latest
kernel CPU optimizations, SMP support, or relying on current libc
performance are non-existent when built and run on a 5+ year old system.

Amos

>
> Thanks and regards,
>
> Amm.
>
>
> On 05/05/2014 07:39 PM, Martin Sperl wrote:
>> Hi Amos!
>> ...
>
>> So I wonder if it is really a wise move to potentially cut off
>> people from security patches because they can no longer
>> compile squid on the system they want to use it on just
>> due to the build-tool dependencies.
>>
>> Is there maybe a plan not to change build-tool versions
>> within a minor version (3.4, 3.5, ...) to somewhat avoid
>> such issues?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Martin
Received on Tue May 06 2014 - 13:37:49 MDT

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