Debian future release strategy proposal Rev2

[MikeMcC399]

• Follows on from Debian future release strategy proposal #2398
• Relates to Add OS maintenance strategy to documentation #2397

Current situation

According to the settings in versions.json Node.js 22 & 24 are set to use Debian 12 (bookworm/oldstable) as default, Node.js 26 sets Debian 13 (trixie/stable) as default.

Images are built for each of the Debian major versions: 11 (bullseye/oldoldstable), 12 (bookworm/oldstable) & 13 (trixie/stable) (see Debian Releases).

Node.js	11 (bullseye)	12 (bookworm)	13 (trixie)
22	used	default	used
24	used	default	used
26	used	used	default

Debian releases transition through milestones:

• Release
• End of Life (EOL) after 3 years
• End of LTS after another 2 years, 5 years in total

When Debian transitions from EOL to LTS, the LTS support team typically define and publish LTS support architectures that are a subset of the architectures supported during the original release phase.

Docker Engine typically removes a Debian release from their required version list when that version transitions to End of LTS.

Current release line suggestions

For existing release lines Node.js 22, 24 & 26, retain Debian version support as long as covered by upstream Debian & Docker support.

Transitions

From Debian releases in the year 2026:

Debian	Transition	Date	Action
12 (bookworm)	End of Life (EOL)	2026-06-10	review supported architecture and drop if needed
11 (bullseye)	End of LTS	2026-08-31	drop from distribution

Current bookworm / bookworm-slim architectures

From versions.json

Node.js	12 (bookworm)
22	amd64, arm32v7, arm64v8, ppc64le, s390x
24	amd64, arm64v8, ppc64le, s390x
26	amd64, arm64v8, ppc64le, s390x

Future release line suggestions

For the future Node.js 27, Alpha Oct 2026, followed by Node.js 27.0.0 in May 2027, consider restricting to support Debian stable and oldstable (2 versions) only. This would require changes in update scripts.