In general, these are the guidelines we consider when deciding what to pre-install:
- Tools and ecosystems that are broadly popular and widely-used will be given priority.
- Recent versions of tools will be given priority over older versions.
- Tools and versions that are deprecated or have reached end-of-life will not be added.
- If a tool can be installed during the build, we will evaluate how much time is saved and how much space is used by having the tool pre-installed.
- MIT, Apache, and GNU licenses are ok, anything else we'll have to check with lawyers.
- If a tool takes much space we will evaluate space usage and provide a decision if this tool can be pre-installed.
- If a tool requires the support of more than one version, we will consider the cost of this maintenance, how often new versions bring dangerous updates.
Note: For new tools, please, create an issue and get an approval from us to add this tool to the image before creating the pull request.
These are the guidelines we follow in software and images supporting routine:
- Tools and versions will typically be removed 6 months after they are deprecated or have reached end-of-life.
- We support at least 2 latest OS versions (LTS only for Ubuntu) and initiate deprecation process for the oldest one when image usage drops below 5%.
- Most of the tools are preinstalled in the latest version only.
- Popular tools can have several versions installed side-by-side with the following strategy:
| Tool name | Installation strategy |
|---|---|
| Java | all LTS versions |
| Node.js | 3 latest LTS versions |
| Go | 3 latest minor versions |
| Python Ruby |
5 most popular major.minor versions |
| PyPy | 3 most popular major.minor versions |
| .NET Core | 2 latest LTS versions and 1 latest version. For each feature version only latest patch is installed |
| GCC GNU Fortran Clang GNU C++ |
3 latest major versions |
| Android NDK | 1 latest, 1 LTS version |
| Xcode | - all OS compatible versions side-by-side - for beta, GM versions - latest beta only - old patch versions are deprecated in 3 months |
In general, once a new version is installed on the image, we announce the default version update 2 weeks prior to deploying it to give time to adapt to upcoming changes. For potentially dangerous updates, we can extend the timeline up to 1 month between the announcement and deployment.