[[!comment format=mdwn
 username="joey"
 subject="""comment 1"""
 date="2015-09-23T16:00:38Z"
 content="""
This is entirely down to the libc used on the build system and included in
the tarball.

Currently the builds use unstable or testing because this lets me get new
library-driven features like sha3 into the build (nearly) ASAP.

It would be possible to switch to using Debian stable. But then I either
lose new library-driven features in the builds, or I have to start
installing haskell libraries from source on the build machines, which would
be a lot of additional work compared to letting Debian maintain hundreds of
haskell library packages for me.

Then too, while I am pretty much committed to keeping git-annex building on
Debian stable (which is actually a lot of work, up to several thousand
lines of ifdefs, and prevents me from using newer ghc features which would
make my code happier), Debian stable does itself have a habit of updating to a
new libc release every couple of years. So no matter what, as long as libc
keeps requiring slightly less ancient kernels for whatever reasons it does,
everything isn't going to be supported forever.

(OTOH, I'd expect that some enterprise level ancient distros might start to
include enterprise level ancient builds of git-annex themselves some time soon?
git-annex version 3, which is broadly compatible with current versions was
released a full 4 years ago already. Linux 2.6.32 is only, er, 3 years
older than that.)
"""]]