Prepare for Node.js 26 release 2026-04-22

[MikeMcC399]

Situation

According to schedule.json the v26 release of Node.js is planned for 2026-04-22 in a little more than 3 weeks time.

Assessment

Reviewing versions.json in this repo and BUILDING.md document in the node repo by executing:

git diff v25.x main -- BUILDING.md

shows no platforms specified in versions.json as being dropped in the default main branch of node, so it should not be necessary to drop any platforms in versions.json for the Docker builds.

Debian releases shows Debian 13 (trixie) as the current "Stable" release with End of LTS on 2030-06-30, which is after the planned EOL of Node.js 26 on 2029-04-30. Debian 12 (bookworm) End of LTS 2028-06-30 & Debian 11 (bullseye) End of LTS 2026-08-31 dates are earlier than EOL of Node.js 26.

Alpine Linux shows v3.21 - v3.23 as supported when Node.js is released.

Suggestions

For the upcoming Node.js 26 release:

• Change default from Debian 12 (bookworm) to Debian 13 (trixie)

  Item	25	26
  debian-default	bookworm	trixie

• Drop oldoldstable & oldstable Debian builds

  I suggest to drop builds for Debian 11 (bullseye / bullseye-slim / oldoldstable) & Debian 12 (bookworm / bookworm-slim / oldstable) for Node.js 26 and build only for Debian 13 (trixie / stable), unless there is a compelling reason to continue with the oldoldstable & oldstable releases. This significantly reduces the number of build combinations. See also Debian future release strategy proposal #2398 regarding defining a strategy for Debian releases.

• For Alpine, continue with v3.22 & v3.23 and with alpine-default as alpine3.23

• Add dates from schedule.json

  "v26": {
      "start": "2026-04-22",
      "lts": "2026-10-28",
      "maintenance": "2027-10-20",
      "end": "2029-04-30",
      "codename": ""
  }

[MikeMcC399]

Questions for maintainers:

• Is it desirable to drop Debian oldoldstable & oldstable for the upcoming Node.js 26 release?
• Are the current set of scripts supposed to support a setup where Node.js 26 would have a different set of variants compared to previously Node.js releases? I originally assumed that versions / variants would be completely data-driven from versions.json, however it appears that is not the whole story!