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Dropping the Current aliases #2680
Description
Problem
The concept of the Current release is changing with the changes of LTS/Alpha starting in v27.
The current-* are equivalent to the variant tags. EX: current-alpine3.23 is the same as alpine3.23.
The only gap with that is there is no plain debian that the plain current points to, only the named Debian codename tags like trixie
Solution
Drop/or deprecate the current tags.
Alternatives to Consider
@tianon @yosifkit @LaurentGoderre could you see the metrics on your side for how often these alias are used? If there is significant usage, maybe this would require more effort. If the usage is minimal, we could probably do it sooner. I would guess it wouldn't be zero no matter what, as I assume there are mirrors that are sucking in everything.
Activity
MikeMcC399 commentedon Oct 31, 2026
The concept of having one release at all times that carries the label "current" is broken starting from 2026-10-28, when Node.js 26 changed from "current" to "LTS" according to https://github.com/nodejs/release#readme
Instead of there being a Node.js 27 release immediately available as the next "current", there is a Node.js 27.0.0-alpha in "alpha" status. It won't become "current" until it is released as Node.js 27.0.0 on 2027-04-22.
So "current" comes and goes.
I'd suggest that the
currenttag not be removed from the Node.js 26 release line, as there is a danger that will break users' workflows without any advantage.Also, if we remove the
currentfloating tag, we have no single replacement floating tag that can be attached to the set of latest non-alpha releases in future.Maybe the OS specific tags are sufficient to use as defaults though?