Bionic end-of-LTS date is now May 31st

[Renan Rodrigo]

[ Impact ]

Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver had its eol-related ("eol", "eol-server", "eol-esm") dates bumped to May 31st. This change needs to hit Bionic systems, so the software running on those systems may interpret it correctly and behave accordingly.

[ Test Plan ]

On a bionic system:
- run `distro-info --date 2023-05-31 --supported`, and check bionic is not listed in the output.
- install a version of distro-info-data which has the updated dates
- run `distro-info --date 2023-05-31 --supported`, and check bionic is listed in the output.
- run `distro-info --date 2023-06-01 --supported`, and check bionic is not listed in the output.

[ Where problems could occur ]

Wrong dates in the CSV lead to all software depending on it crashing (if the format is wrong, for instance) or behaving in a different way than intended.
A close review of the date and format (as this is a simple change) can make this change safe enough.
why

[ Other Info ]

On devel, the "eol-esm" is the only date that needs adjustment; all eol fields need adjustment on bionic-devel.

[Renan Rodrigo (renanrodrigo)]

I see the change to the "eol" and "eol-server" field is already on ubuntu/devel.
The "eol-esm" needs to change, and the changes need to be SRUed at least to Bionic.

[Stefano Rivera (stefanor)]

Should the same changes for eol-esm be made for 20.04 and 22.04?

[Renan Rodrigo (renanrodrigo)]

Not sure - I say they should be updated at least on Bionic so anything relying on distro-info-data behaves appropriately there.
If those changes need to land on Focal/Jammy, I'm happy to open MRs against those branches as well.

[Stefano Rivera (stefanor)]

What I'm asking is whether in the development branch of distro-info-data, we should extend the ESM EOL to the end of June for all of these ESM releases.

I'm outside Canonical, so I don't know what the internal expectations are here.

[Renan Rodrigo (renanrodrigo)]

Ooh I see, sorry for misunderstanding;

So, yes, it will likely change, but the final decision about this will be made in the next engineering roadmap. By the start of May, we will know it for sure.

[Benjamin Drung (bdrung)]

This change is a subset of the change in bug #2003949.

[Renan Rodrigo (renanrodrigo)]

Hello, Benjamin
Sorry I didn't see this other bug.
I'd say yes it overlaps, but "eol-esm" needs a bump too

[Benjamin Drung (bdrung)]

Does this eol-esm overlap apply for all LTS versions?

[Renan Rodrigo (renanrodrigo)]

Stefano asked the same - the answer is probably yes.
This is still to be decided, we will have an answer by ~ May 5th - but given the eol dates were bumped, most likely the LTS change will be applied to every other LTS

[Dimitri John Ledkov (xnox)]

@ Renan Rodrigo (renanrodrigo)

There has been extensive discussion and agreement for the dates that have already been implemented by foundations in distro-info-data and released in Lunar.

The changes there were extensively discussed and agreed, and whilst there was broad agreement to document overlap end of standard & esm supports, there was no discussion that i am aware of to extend the overall esm-eol dates to 10y + 1 month.

Are you sure this is not duplicate work, and what you really after is to ensure that backports of https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/distro-info-data/+bug/2003949 are accepted into the stable releases?

Do dates in Lunar, satisfy you and whoever requested these changes once again?