Release Notes for Alpine 3.18.0

Linux Kernel

linux-lts 6.1 https://lkml.org/lkml/2022/12/11/206

Kernel modules are now signed.

musl 1.2.4

Support for DNS lookups over TCP.

https://www.openwall.com/lists/musl/2023/05/02/1

DT_RELR

on x86, x86_64, and ppc64le, -Wl,-z,pack-relative-relocs is now added to the base LDFLAGS. this reduces elf (executable/shared-library) size by 10% on average.

however, these binaries are now not portable to other musl-based systems that have a musl older than 1.2.4, because older versions are incapable of loading these binaries.

GNOME

The gnome metapackage was reworked and the packages gnome-apps-extra and gnome-games-collection were removed to avoid opinionated lists in metapackages. It is advised to remove those from /etc/apk/world before performing the upgrade. Additionally, the new subpackage gnome-dev-tools was added following upstream's recommendations.

Plasma 5.27.4

From 5.26.5 before. This includes some new packages like plasma-welcome (a welcoming application that shows up on first boot to configure some initial settings) and flatpak-kcm (a configuration page for the system settings to control Flatpak permissions, much like GNOME's Flatseal). This Plasma release is the last one that will be build on Qt5 and will probably remain in use for Alpine 3.19 as well.

dbus

dbus-activation has been removed from packages openrc-settingsd and apk-polkit-rs. To make use of their services, make sure to start and enable the openrc-settingsd and apk-polkit-server services, respectively.

removal of pipewire-media-session

pipewire-media-session was removed, as upstream explicitly recommends to not use it, and it's completely superceded by wireplumber. if you used it, make sure you don't have pipewire-media-session in /etc/apk/world, and configure any scripts you might've had to launch wireplumber instead.

Python

python 3.11 https://docs.python.org/3/whatsnew/3.11.html

splitting of python pycache .pyc files

most python modules split their __pycache__ to a -pyc subpackage, pulled by default. to save space and not pull it (incurring python interpreter startup costs, as it generates it each run), run apk add !python3-pyc

PHP 8.2

Added 8.2 packages with subset of the most common extensions. Version 8.1 still remains primary provider priority but some web applications started to use 8.2.

Ruby 3.2

Ruby was updated to 3.2. https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/news/2022/12/25/ruby-3-2-0-released/

gdk-pixbuf-loaders

a few gdk-pixbuf loaders were added, and they were all added to an install_if metapackage rule- apk add gdk-pixbuf-loaders to enable the loaders for corresponding image libraries you have installed.

Docker 23

The docker package shipped with Alpine 3.18 has a dependency on docker-cli-buildx, as Docker 23 now uses it for builds.

Also, Docker 23 no longer enables the overlay storage driver, as it has been deprecated for a long time and is nearing removal. if your deployment is still configured to use it, dockerd will fail to start. To fix this, either...

migrate to overlay2 in /etc/docker/daemon.json
hardcode it to overlay in the same file (instead of blank), though this will eventually break in a future upgrade

For more detailed information about Docker 23, please refer to https://docs.docker.com/engine/release-notes/23.0/