Ubuntu 12.04 Precise build image End Of Life warning

At the end of April 2017, Ubuntu 12.04 will no longer be supported by Canonical. Additionally, CircleCI are not updating the 12.04 build image with new versions of packages.

We encourage all customers to upgrade to our 14.04 build image.

How can I tell if I’m using 12.04?

Go to a recent build of your project on CircleCI and click on the “Start Container” step:

Or you can go to “Project Settings > Build Environment”:

How do I change to 14.04?

You can change the build image via the menu in “Project settings > Build environment” shown above. You’ll need to trigger a new build by pushing a commit once you’ve made this change (just running a ‘rebuild’ will reuse the same build image).

Many projects will run fine by making this switch. If it breaks your builds, now is a good time to update any dependencies and fix issues. Helpful docs pages:

You might like to create a new branch for your project where you test some builds on 14.04 and make any necessary configuration updates.

If you need help getting your builds green on 14.04 you can ask here on Discuss or reach out to Support.

If you can’t get things working it’s easy to switch back to 12.04 by changing the setting above until you have time to revisit it.

Do I have to change to 14.04?

You can continue to build on 12.04 for the foreseeable future. We will keep the image available for you. But do be aware that many packages will start to get very out-of-date and apt commands may start to fail as 12.04 repositories start to go offline in May.

What about CircleCI 2.0?

CircleCI 2.0 is currently in Beta. There’s nothing to stop you going directly from our 12.04 image to building on 2.0. But in our experience, this is more difficult than going from 12.04 to 14.04, since many packages you rely on are likely very outdated and not available as Docker images which make building on 2.0 easier.

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