Docker-openvpn: RFC: Docker image versioning + OpenVPN releases

[kylemanna]

Hey All,

With the release of OpenVPN 2.4 alot of people have requested it. For a while I had hoped that Alpine would update their stable 3.5 branch to it and it would get rolled in to the image automatically, but this has not happened just yet.

I'm interested in hearing what people thing about ways to accomplish the following:

1. Provide a stable release under the default Docker latest tag. Something people can blindly use with little risk.
2. Provide Docker tags that track an upstream release, both past releases and new releases.

To accomplish goal (1) I assume the master branch will just proceed as it is with no surprises. At some point Alpine 3.6 will come out and it will update at that point.

For goal (2) past releases, I propose stable branches that track OpenVPN release. For example branch openvpn-v2.3 with corresponding docker tag 2.3. These branches likely will be maintained only when people notice or find issues.

To accomplish (2) for future releases, there may be an edge branch and corresponding Docker tag. This will track the Alpine Edge release and have the latest Alpine openvpn release. Anyone wanting the latest features can follow this.

To recap:

1. The git master branch and Docker latest tag stay as they are today.
2. I'll create an edge branch and Docker edge tag that will use alpine:edge as the base Docker image.
3. I'll create a openvpn-v2.3 branch with the current master HEAD and a corresponding Docker 2.3 tag for those running deployments to adopt for stability.

Thoughts?

[kylemanna]

Related: #1, #163, #262

[pieterlange]

Sounds good to me.

[chepurko]

Yes, good.

[breznak]

Also related to #264

Definitely :+1: for the release branches/tags and for providing edge with newer releases.

• I'd even consider upstream/git that would provide the development -git version of OpenVPN
• about the ways to deal with it:
  
  
  
  • is AlpineLinux a hard requirement? (I don't know how many benefits does it have for this project, compared to other distros). Could we use other distro that has OpenVPN better (faster) maintained?
  
  
  • Contribute to Alpine and provide them the package? But I guess the edge solves it, may be applicable for the git versions.
  
  
  • Why not build the OVPN package ourselves? And then include only the binary (and deps) in the image?
  
  

[kylemanna]

I'd even consider upstream/git that would provide the development -git version of OpenVPN

I don't think anyone wants this. Anyone who might want the bleeding edge releases should be more then capable of submitting a pull request themselves. Nobody has brought this up, and nobody has submitted a pull request. I think that the few days that Alpine Linux lags on OpenVPN releases is more then sufficient.

Only a handful of users have even requested OpenVPN 2.4.x and it has been out for some time.

[buchdag]

@kylemanna sounds good to me too.

[DittmarSteiner]

I’d definitely like to have OpenVPN 2.4.x for coming roll-outs, where I don’t want to upgrade later.
Thank you!

[kylemanna]

Alpine 3.6.0 was just released and OpenVPN 2.4.2 is included.

[pieterlange]

alpine:3.6 docker image is available now too :+1:

[pieterlange]

Updated within 24 hours. Thanks for the amazing support on the project @kylemanna! The new features provided in 2.4 will surely prove to be useful!

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• There's a typo in the original issue body: 4.2 instead of 2.4
• I think i fixed the addArg function here in order to support using arguments with multiple options. Only ran into this after upgrading to alpine:3.6, so i guess bash changed a bit.

[kylemanna]

Updated as described above, but moved master branch to alpine:latest which will bring master branch to openvpn 2.4.

[kylemanna]

I think i fixed the addArg function here in order to support using arguments with multiple options. Only ran into this after upgrading to alpine:3.6, so i guess bash changed a bit.

@pieterlange does this trip up some of the tests?

[pieterlange]

Probably.

Might have something to do with the exec invocation in my entrypoint.sh as well.

[kylemanna]

The Travis-CI tests passed. If there's a problem, please open an issue or PR and we should fix the tests so that they detect it.

Closing this issue for now. Thanks for the feedback and comments all!