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pipewire-media-session was removed, as upstream explicitly recommends to not use it, and it's completely superceded by wireplumber.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

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/