debian stretch update

[Nemo64]

This is probably huge but I ask anyways.
Is there any plan to update to debian 9 (stretch)?

I have to work with typo3 which now requires libpcre3 in version 8.38 (the old version actually creates segment faults).
Quick search reveals: yep, jessie has only 8.35.

I have tried it with the alpine image and that one works but i feel more comfortable with debian so I'd prefer that.

[Nemo64]

If someone has the same problem with libpcre3, i have a workaround using package pinning:

create a source.list file:

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian stretch main

and a source.preference file:

Package: libpcre3
Pin: release a=stretch
Pin-Priority: 1000

Package: *
Pin: release a=stretch
Pin-Priority: 1

And add this to your Dockerfile

COPY source.list /etc/apt/sources.list.d/source.list
COPY source.preference /etc/apt/preferences.d/source

So now, if you try to install libpcre3, it will be downloaded from the stretch release. So now you just need to install the newer libpcre (preferably in your existing apt-get install command)
apt-get update && DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive apt-get install -y libpcre3 libpcre3-dev

I haven't found something breaking yet but package pinning (especially with libraries) is a bit of an adventure so be careful.

[tianon]

See #448.

I think #360 and docker-library/golang#131 (comment) are also relevant (since a Debian version bump is going to be a similar situation). 😞

[yosifkit]

Closing in favor of discussion to create base distro update process #504.