Release Notes for Alpine 3.18.0

Base System

Linux Kernel

linux-lts was updated from 5.15 to 6.1. release notes

Kernel modules are now signed.

musl 1.2.4

Support for DNS lookups over TCP. release notes

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.

e2fsprogs 1.47.0

The e2fsprogs package shipped with Alpine 3.18 changed the behaviour of mke2fs so that newly created filesystems have two additional features enabled.

From release notes:

The mke2fs program (via the mke2fs.conf file) now enables the metadata_csum_seed and orphan_file features by default.

However, whilst the metadata_csum_seed feature is known about by older versions of e2fsck the orphan_file feature was both added to e2fsprogs 1.47.0 and enabled at the same time. Therefore older versions of e2fsck are unable to fsck a filesystem created by mke2fs 1.47.0.

Compilers and Runtimes

PHP 8.2

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

Python

python3 was updated to 3.11. release notes

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

R 4.3

R was updated to 4.3. release notes

Ruby 3.2

ruby was updated to 3.2. release notes

Rust 1.69

rust was updated to 1.69.

Desktop

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 the upstream's recommendations.

Plasma 5.27.4

plasma was updated from 5.26.5 to 5.27.4. This includes some new packages like plasma-welcome (a welcoming application that shows up on the 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 built on Qt5 and will probably remain in use for Alpine 3.19 as well.

Sway 1.8

sway was updated from 1.7 to 1.8. release notes

gdk-pixbuf-loaders

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

Others

Removal of pipewire-media-session

pipewire-media-session was removed, as upstream explicitly recommends not to 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.

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.

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 the release notes.

nginx 1.24

nginx was updated to the new stable branch 1.24.x. release notes