The Future is Here: Upgrading to Ubuntu 22.04

Greetings! We are excited to announce our latest efforts in building stellar-core Ubuntu packages for the latest LTS release, Ubuntu 22.04.

In order to support this release, support is necessary for a clang version that ships with it, clang 12. Unfortunately, this clang is newer than the clang that ships with Ubuntu 18.04. The effort to modify these build and test systems to support multiple clang versions would be too great, so we have made the tough decision to deprecate support for 18.04.

For those who are unable to upgrade, fear not. You have options. You can switch from the SDF package to the official SDF Docker image, which will continue to work long after 18.04 reaches its end of life. Or, you can compile the stellar-core manually, though eventually, we will be using C++ functionality not available on 18.04, and builds may stop working.

We understand that change can be difficult, but we are confident that this decision will lead to a brighter future for users of the Stellar network. We also want to emphasize that dropping support for these packages does not mean it will be impossible to continue operating on Ubuntu 18.04. It simply means that it will require additional work on the behalf of the user, with limited support from SDF’s engineering teams.

For those who choose to stay on the older operating system release, they can still use this software without the packages. However, once support for the package drops, there may be known issues or limitations. For example, someone running a node on this older OS may not be able to continue working once support is discontinued.

Everyone at SDF is committed to contributing to providing the latest and greatest technology while also offering support to those who need it. If you have any questions, concerns, or comments, please feel free to join the Stellar Developers Discord and drop your feedback there. We are here to help and support you every step of the way.