Deprecating Core and Supervised installation methods, and 32-bit systems

[crzynik (Nicolas Mowen)]

@rbaker91

Third, you keep bringing up the “burden of support,” but isn’t the standard response to Supervised complaints that it was never supported to begin with?

No, that is only the case for users that were running other software besides HomeAssistant in the supervised OS. If the supervised installation was run according to the documentation then it was supported, and all changes would have to be tested before each Home Assistant release to ensure nothing broke.

There is considerable burden not only in supporting users but also ensuring that all changes made in Home Assistant did not break the supervised installation, which requires more time to test and address corner cases that are not present on the primary installation methods.

This detail from a developer was related to the deprecation of the core installation method, but highlights how this can be a compound effect:

While we don’t track install types by issues, and my experience is bound to be anecdotal, from the perspective of working the issue queue, core installs generate an outsized number of issue reports and development work to support because there are so many potential configurations. I estimate that 15% of the time I devote to Home Assistant development goes to supporting corner cases in core installs, which doesn’t include all the time spent downstream in libraries to handle these corner cases. It’s a significant time sink. Dropping support won’t get all the time back as downstream libs I contribute to (like zeroconf and aiohttp) are also used outside of HA and will still need to support many of these cases.

Since we have it as a supported method, I’ve felt that time should be devoted to supporting it; however, that comes at the price of building new things, and I can count the number of months that I’ve had to defer new features in favor of spending time chasing core corner cases. While I like solving these types of problems, and thats why I do it, it’s to the detriment of everything else that could be done.

@rbaker91

just be honest about it. Trying to justify it with “support burden” while insisting it’s always been unsupported comes across as disingenuous.

If you are going to deliberately choose to not believe the developers when they say that that this is the issue, then you are the one not being reasonable.

@frenck

Core & Supervised installation methods

• Complexity & maintenance: These methods have become increasingly complex and difficult for users to maintain, resulting in frequent support issues.
• Low usage: Core (2.57%) and Supervised (3.3%) installations represent only a small fraction of our user base. Maintaining official support diverts resources from the methods most users prefer (OS & Container).
• Better alternatives: Most users running Core or Supervised installations can achieve a better, simpler, and more reliable experience by switching to Home Assistant OS or Container installations. Running software and services in containers has become a widely popular and well-supported method across the industry.
• Improved first-time user experience: The Core or Supervised installation methods are not the best methods for users to get started, and often reflect badly on our project and community. Focusing our support and instructions on OS & Container makes it possible to streamline the whole initial experience much better.