←  Back to Changelog Gitpod workspaces are being updated to use Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish).

March 28, 2023

Workspace Images OS Update and Breaking Changes

On April 3rd, Gitpod will upgrade their workspace images to utilize the latest Long Term Support (LTS) version of Ubuntu, which is Ubuntu 22.04.2 (codenamed “Jammy Jellyfish”). As this is a significant release, there are some breaking changes that you should take into account. In case you encounter any problems with your workspaces as a result of this update, kindly submit an issue in the workspace-images repository.

What should you do

Consider which docker image tag is right for your team and repo(s).

Options to consider:

  1. Continue using the latest tag. New workspace starts after the release will use Jammy.
  2. Test Jammy before it is released using tag 2023-03-24-02-48-18.
  3. Continue using Focal even after the release using tag 2023-01-16-03-31-28. Switch to Jammy at your leisure, after you’ve had more time to do testing.
  4. Use a custom base image, and continue using Focal for a longer period of time.

Breaking changes

  1. All maintained images have been updated from Focal to Jammy [1][2] at hub.docker.com/u/gitpod.
  2. gitpod/workspace-ruby-2 is deprecated and will not be updated; Ruby 2.7 is EOL March 31, 2023.
  3. Upgraded gitpod/workspace-mongodb to mongo v6. v5 doesn’t support OpenSSL 3, OpenSSL 3 comes out of the box with Jammy.
  4. Updated gitpod/workspace-node-lts from Node 16 to Node 18, and also in gitpod/workspace-full.
  5. Updated gitpod/workspace-node from Node 18 to Node 19.
  6. Installed Python 3.9 in gitpod/workspace-yugabytedb*, changing its base ref from full. Refer to its dockerfile for background

Fixes

  1. Bumped Rust to 1.67.1
  2. Bumped Ruby patch versions for 3.0, 3.1, 3.2
  3. Overrode OpenSSL for Ruby 3.0 to support Jammy
  4. Bump Ruby in gitpod/workspace-full from 3.1 to 3.2
  5. Bump Python in gitpod/workspace-full from Python 3.8 to 3.11
  6. Bump nvm version from 0.39.0 to 0.39.3

New features

  1. Use asdf version manager in gitpod/workspace-elixir to more easily manage erlang and elixir versions

FAQs

Is Gitpod still maintaining support for Focal in its images?

No. Please consider the above options to handle the update.

What else should I consider as part of the upgrade?

The GNU C Library (glibc) varies between Focal and Jammy.

OpenSSL varies between Focal and Jammy.

Both led to some of the breaking changes (above). Therefore, this may impact you and your team, depending on your related workloads.