Re: [PATCH 1/2] scripts: add TOML config to container tool

On Sat, Aug 29, 2026 at 10:56:47AM +0200, Guillaume Tucker wrote:

Hi Miguel,

On 28/08/2026 7:35 pm, Miguel Ojeda wrote:

quoted

On Fri, Aug 28, 2026 at 7:25 PM Guillaume Tucker [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

It states Python 3.9 which was already older than the 3.10 minimum
set when the container tool was merged.  Also my understanding is
that it's not a hard requirement for all the kernel tools, only for
building and producing a functioning kernel.  If I misunderstood this

I didn't check at the moment, but at least back when the "(optional)"
tag was removed, it was only required for certain configurations from
what I understand (I am not sure why the tag was removed).

In any case, it is nice if we could just say that it is required -- it
is quite useful to have around, especially due to its standard
library.

OK so I'll leave this part as-is for now unless someone makes a
strong case for downgrading to v3.9, thanks for confirming.

quoted

And regarding the minimum version, it would be nice to eventually have
a single minimum for all Python scripts, no? Debian oldstable is
already at 3.11, so I think we could perhaps bump the minimum already.
And Debian stable is 3.13, which from your list would be enough for
everything on your list, right? So we could perhaps set that as the
actual minimum for everything in the future.

I was wondering about this too, especially since v3.10 is soon going
to reach end-of-life which means no more security patches.  In
principle newer, version should be backwards compatible so if we just
bumped the minimum to v3.13 older scripts that were written for v3.9
should still work - but it'd be nice to have a way to test that.

Well that's beyond this series anyway, maybe something for KernelCI?

If I filtered the repology data correctly, bumping the minimum Python 
version to v3.11 would be problematic for these (major) distributions:

  * Alpine Linux 3.17
  * CentOS 8
  * Debian 11
  * Devuan 4.0
  * OpenMandriva Cooker
  * OpenMandriva Rolling
  * Slackware 15.0
  * Ubuntu 20.04

With the end of security support for Python 3.10, I think that is 
acceptable for a minimum version bump.

Bumping the minimum version of a tool used in scattered places in the 
tree to a version that is just 3-4 years old should not be done too 
careless, but I think for Python, I'd second bumping to v3.11.

Kind regards,
Nicolas