[CentOS-devel] CentOS 5 build scripts

[Jim Perrin]

Preface: My opinions here are my own, and may/may not reflect that of
the distro blah blah.

On 5/18/07, Ray Van Dolson <rvandolson at esri.com> wrote:

>
> I dunno that I'd feel too concerned about this.  Anyone with the
> wherewithal to create and sustain development of a distro will be able
> to figure out all these steps on their own no doubt.  After all, you
> guys got CentOS going didn't you? :)

Right, and those folks are just as welcome to rebuild from upstream as
we do. I don't have any issue with folks doing that at all. My primary
concern comes from the support/branding side of it. If I create some
half-baked rebuild of centos and leave the centos naming and such in
(because I followed a cookie cutter recipe and was lazy and/or didn't
know how to) anyone who uses that distro will have a bad experience
with 'centos', which will reflect poorly on us even though we have no
control over that build.

In a similar vein, I'm quite happy with the Trixbox folks. They use
centos as a base for their asterisk stuff and I'm very glad that they
chose us; folks seem very happy with it. At the same time, when their
users show up here on the list, or on irc saying they're using centos
and having a problem with php 4.4.x or some other newer version that
we don't ship, it can become difficult to clue them in on what's going
on.

> The average joe might be able to follow the instructions/tips and roll
> their own CentOS based distro, but I would be surprised to see it pick
> up steam unless they were truly motivated / competent in which case
> they probably wouldn't need the instructions in the first place...

And if they release something that fails, how do we migrate their
users back in after their customizations, or reassure them that it
wasn't really centos they're unhappy with....

> I think it'd be interesting to have instructions available for at least
> replacing / upgrading the kernel on the installation CD's.

I do also, but I'd take a cautious approach and use the centosplus
kernels or security updated kernels first, not a vanilla rebuild.

-- 
During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
George Orwell