.. _platforms:

Supported Platforms
===================

In general, this version of Kea builds and runs on any POSIX-compliant
system with a C++ compiler (with C++14 support), the Botan cryptographic library,
the log4cplus logging library and the Boost system library.

ISC regularly tests Kea on many operating systems and architectures, but
lacks the resources to test all of them. Consequently, ISC is only able to
offer support on a "best-effort" basis for some.

Regularly Tested Platforms
--------------------------

Kea is officially supported on Alpine, Debian, Fedora, FreeBSD, RHEL, and Ubuntu
systems. Kea-|release| builds have been tested on:

* Alpine — 3.21, 3.22, 3.23
* Debian — 11, 12, 13
* Fedora — 43
* FreeBSD — 15
* RHEL — 8, 9, 10
* Ubuntu — 22.04, 24.04

There are currently no plans to port Kea to Windows systems.

Best-Effort
-----------

The following are platforms on which Kea is known to build and run.
ISC makes every effort to fix bugs on these platforms, but may be unable to
do so quickly due to lack of hardware, less familiarity on the part of
engineering staff, and other constraints.

* macOS — 14, 15, 26

Community-Maintained
--------------------

These systems have once been regularly tested, but official support for it has
been abandoned, usually due to discontinued support on their own part. Older
versions may not have the required dependencies for building Kea easily
available, although it is possible in many cases to compile on those directly
from source. The community and interested parties may wish to help with
maintenance, and we welcome patch contributions, although we cannot guarantee
that we will accept them. All contributions are assessed against the risk of
adverse effect on officially supported platforms.

These include platforms past their respective EOL dates, such as:

* Alpine — 3.20 (EOL 01 Apr 2026) and older
* CentOS — 8 (EOL 31 December 2021) and older
* Debian — 10 (EOL 30 June 2022) and older
* Fedora — 42 (EOL 13 May 2026) and older
* FreeBSD — 14 and older
* macOS — 13 (EOL 15 September 2025) and older
* Ubuntu — 21.04 (EOL 20 January 2022) and older

Unsupported Platforms
---------------------

These are platforms on which versions of Kea since 1.7 are known *not* to build or run:

* Windows (all versions)
* Windows Server (all versions)
* Any platform with OpenSSL 1.0.1 or earlier, which does not also have Botan as an alternative
* Any platform with log4cplus version 1.0.2 or earlier.
* Any platform with a compiler that doesn't support C++14.

.. _required-software:

Required Software at Runtime
============================

Kea uses various extra software packages which may not be
provided in the default installation of some operating systems, nor in
the standard package collections. This required software may need to
be installed separately. (For the build requirements, also see :ref:`build-requirements`.)

-  Kea supports two cryptographic libraries: Botan and OpenSSL. Only one
   of them is required to be installed during compilation. Kea uses the
   Botan library for C++ (https://botan.randombit.net/), version 2.0 or
   later; support for Botan versions earlier than 2.0 was
   removed as of Kea 1.7.0. As an alternative to Botan, Kea can
   use the OpenSSL cryptographic library (https://www.openssl.org/),
   version 1.0.2 or later.

-  Kea uses the log4cplus C++ logging library
   (https://sourceforge.net/p/log4cplus/wiki/Home/). It requires log4cplus version
   1.0.3 or later.

-  Kea requires the Boost system library (https://www.boost.org/).
   Building with the header-only version of Boost is no longer
   recommended.

Some optional features of Kea have additional dependencies.

-  To store lease information in a MySQL database, Kea requires
   MySQL headers and libraries. This is an optional dependency;
   Kea can be built without MySQL support.

-  To store lease information in a PostgreSQL database, Kea
   requires PostgreSQL headers and libraries. This is an optional
   dependency; Kea can be built without PostgreSQL support.

-  Kea provides a NETCONF interface with the ``kea-netconf`` agent. This Kea module
   requires Sysrepo software when used. Building Kea with NETCONF support
   requires many dependencies to be installed, which are described in more
   detail in :ref:`netconf-install`. This is an optional dependency; Kea can be
   built without NETCONF support.

-  To sign and verify DNS updates the Kea DDNS server may use GSS-TSIG, which requires
   MIT Kerberos 5 or Heimdal libraries. The dependencies required to be
   installed are described in more detail in :ref:`gss-tsig-install`. This is an
   optional dependency; Kea can be built without GSS-TSIG support.
