Platform Requirements for 17.x

[AshCripps]

Its that time of year again

What we build and test on

From https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/master/BUILDING.md#official-binary-platforms-and-toolchains

Binary package	Platform and Toolchain
aix-ppc64	AIX 7.2 TL04 on PPC64BE with GCC 8
darwin-x64	macOS 10.15, Xcode Command Line Tools 11 with -mmacosx-version-min=10.13
darwin-arm64 (and .pkg)	macOS 11 (arm64), Xcode Command Line Tools 12 with -mmacosx-version-min=10.13
linux-arm64	CentOS 7 with devtoolset-8 / GCC 8 8
linux-armv7l	Cross-compiled on Ubuntu 18.04 x64 with custom GCC toolchain
linux-ppc64le	CentOS 7 with devtoolset-8 / GCC 8 8
linux-s390x	RHEL 7 with devtoolset-8 / GCC 8 8
linux-x64	CentOS 7 with devtoolset-8 / GCC 8 8
win-x64 and win-x86	Windows 2012 R2 (x64) with Visual Studio 2019

Compiler levels

Operating System	Compiler Versions
Linux	GCC >= 8.3
Windows	Visual Studio >= 2019 with the Windows 10 SDK on a 64-bit host
macOS	Xcode >= 11 (Apple LLVM >= 11)

Actions

• Add some Big Sur intel based macs

I dont think theres much to do this time around? cc @nodejs/build

[nschonni]

Does it make sense to raise Alpine/musl from Experimental to Tier 2 for the new release line?

[mhdawson]

@nschonni I think raising Alpine/musl has been waiting on more active contributors/collaborators working to support it. (ie who would be our go-to people to involve when there are problems/issues that need to be resolved) I'm not sure I've seen that change substantially.

[nschonni]

Right, I think it's still mostly just @rvagg and @richardlau that do the care and feeding for those on the Unofficial Builds still.

[rvagg]

The @nodejs/docker folks are pretty on-the-ball wrt Alpine builds, although I'm not sure there's anyone on there that wants to be on the hook to support core when things break. We do already have Alpine in our CI mix so breakage is already something we look for with every commit and it's been pretty stable, so I think it might even already qualify for Tier 2:

Tier 2: These platforms represent smaller segments of the Node.js user base. The Node.js Build Working Group maintains infrastructure for full test coverage. Test failures on tier 2 platforms will block releases. Infrastructure issues may delay the release of binaries for these platforms.

@nodejs/docker do we have any people willing to be put on a @nodejs/musl group to be go-to if/when weird musl things break that nobody else has expertise or setups to debug?

[mhdawson]

Since 17.x went out I think this can be closed.