Home Assistant - Deprecating Core and Supervised installation methods, and 32-bit systems
Home Assistant - Deprecating Core and Supervised installation methods, and 32-bit systems
This deprecation will help focus support efforts and streamline development.
This seems reasonable to me?
If you're running it that way you still can, they're just not going to accept bug reports or have end user docs anymore. All the developer docs will still cover it.
It's an open source project and they need to focus their energy on known good configs.
It's reasonable for an engineering standpoint. Bummer for people who don't want to run HASSIOS or install HA on an already provisioned system without having to fuck with docker.
Fortunately:
No support for Core or Supervised—can I still use them?
You can still use them even if we no longer support them. There are many users running Home Assistant in all kinds of unofficial ways. This change just means we are removing it from our end-user documentation and will no longer recommend using these installation methods from an official standpoint.
Will the developer documentation on these things remain?
Yes, those will remain. The developer documentation for running Home Assistant’s Core Python application directly in a Python virtual environment will remain. This is how we develop. This proposal is about removing end-user documentation and support.
Home Assistant has so many moving parts, so I don't complain. I do wish containers would become first class citizens like the OS, because some stuff is just harder in containers. The only thing I can think of as to the "why" is because of how the OS project installs software, but that's an easily addressed problem so it must be something else.
Still, it's nice to know the container method is moving forward; I'm so done with installing specific OSes just to use some given piece of software.
Wait, does this mean they're deprecating the docker image?
Nope. Docker and Home Assistant OS will be the only supported installation strategies
You didn't even read the article, did you?
We have deprecated the following installation methods:
Home Assistant Core installation method, where you run your system in a Python environment, not to be confused with Container (for example, running your system in Docker).
Home Assistant’s Supervised installation method, which involves running your own operating system, then installing the Supervisor and other requirements on top of that.
I skimmed the article. Home Assistant Supervised seemed like it may be branding for the Docker edition, which apparently it is not.
Nope
Gotta admit, it was a bit difficult to get my head around all the different installation types when I was a new user, so simplification is probably well over due
I jumped through all their hoops for a Supervised Debian 11 install. It was a massive pain in the ass, and they dropped support for 11 back in October. 0/10 would not recommend.
They've done this once before and walked it back.
Out of that decision and the backlash came the metrics, so they'd be able to make informed decisions before depreciating something.
Last time, I used Core (IIRC, it wasn't even called Core back then) and was quite upset. Before they walked it back, I switched to the OS version and don't really regret it. If their metrics now tell them that core isn't worth supporting, it probably isn't, but I definitely understand being upset about it.
It definitely sucks that the system that's supposed to be about giving users freedom and options is removing some.
ETA: Backups also make this whole thing so much easier now. Back then, backing up and restoring core meant manually copying a bunch of files, but now, it's a completely different and easier experience.
I am running it in docker and thought that wasn't official. The ideal for me would be if someone competent packaged it for Debian.