On Sun, 20 Dec 2020 at 22:19, Mark Mielke mark.mielke@gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, Dec 20, 2020 at 6:34 PM Gordon Messmer gordon.messmer@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/19/20 8:27 PM, Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
On Sat, Dec 19, 2020 at 12:29 PM Matthew Miller mattdm@mattdm.org
wrote:
It's important to note that the CentOS Linux rebuild never actually
had
this. RHEL minor releases are actually branches, and you can stay at
a minor
release and still get security updates.
Are you saying the CentOS point releases do *not* match as closely as possible the corresponding RHEL point release?
No, no one is saying that. Matthew said that you can stay at a minor release of RHEL and still get security updates. CentOS does not offer
that.
This is not correct. Please stop saying it. CentOS is bug-for-bug compatible with RHEL for *active* releases.
We came up with the phrase "bug-for-bug" compatible during EL5 as a GOAL to aim for. CentOS was NEVER bug-for-bug compatible. We aimed for it like a target to get to but we also had to release the software eventually and don't have the extensive testing mechanisms to prove 'bug-for-bug' compatibility. Sometimes CentOS shipped packages which did not have a particular bug because we could not exactly duplicate the build environment and other times we added new bugs because our build environment is not exactly the same.
Over the years as software has grown in greater complexity this divergence has become more likely. Modularity, software like rust, go, etc all require long build chains where any 'divergence' can introduce or remove bugs without a quick way to test.
At best, CentOS has been "good-enough" compatible for a set of years. The only way to be bug-for-bug compatible would require a reproducible build and test environment.