Release Notes for Alpine 3.18.0

• python 3.11 https://docs.python.org/3/whatsnew/3.11.html
• linux-lts 6.1 https://lkml.org/lkml/2022/12/11/206

• 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.

• 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.

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.

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pipewire-media-session was removed, as upstream explicitly recommends to not use it, and it's completely superceded by wireplumber.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.

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