Hi Karanbir,
2011/1/7 Karanbir Singh mail-lists@karan.org
Hi Thomas, I seem to have missed your email yesterday.
no problem, happens to me quite often :).
On 01/05/2011 01:37 PM, Thomas Bendler wrote:
CentOS is not SL I know but the source is equal.
Not really. They do things to the distro that we dont - and we work towards different(ish ?) goals. A bulk of the work is shared and perhaps overlaps, which is why having them do their thing on a different track is good - for us and for them.
What I mean is that both flavors are build out of RHEL sources with more or less work on the original sources.
I'm seeking for two different things, one thing is an alpha or beta ISO (which gives you at least the ability to install a minimal CentOS 6) two
This is the bit that I dont understand. If there is an ISO set, why would it be Alpha or Beta ? if the iso sets are complete - we release that stuff as gold.
That is exactly the point, it's released when it's ready. So looking at the current situation, RHEL6 was released early November, now it's early January and I still can't start with reworking my puppet installation to match CentOS6 (I did it with RHEL6 and SL6, but I need to check it for CentOS as well). So when CentOS6 is released (maybe this month, maybe next month, maybe even later) I can start working on Puppet to get it ready for this release (which may also take a month or so until everything is in production). This means, when CentOS6 is released I have the upgrade work as well as the configuration management work at the same time, I would like to do the configuration work before CentOS6 is released. Simply because when CentOS6 is released and it's in the press that it's released a lot of people stand in front of my desk asking me when they can use the new release because of feature xyz ... :).
[...] However, the focus isnt working with these tools - the idea of these tools working is upto them doing whats needed to work with CentOS. The CentOS focus is and must remain upstream compatible.
Yes, but this is the problem, CentOS identify itself as CentOS. When I check the configuration management with original RHEL6 it identify itself as RedHat. There are some ways working around that issue (i.e. patch facter or changing redhat-release), but I would prefer having something like download the RHEL Source RPMs, integrate CentOS modifications (in a state as it currently is) and have it run with whatever tool to get an ISO image as the result. This also show me if there are still build errors which I can report to bugs.c.o or where I can send a patch to bugs.c.o so that the build team can fix it as well.
[...] The idea of sekreet-sauce is completely unfounded. And therein lies the issue. Too many people think that we bless the stuff with some holy water from somewhere to magically churn out packages. Its simply not true. At best a rpmbuild -ba <foo.spec>; should give you a usable result, at worst a mock rebuild. As for documenting things - so many people are using bugs.c.o already, why do you find that unsuitable ?
It's not an idea, it's how people recognize the current situation. Make a simple test, forget for an hour all things you know about CentOS (will be hard in your case, I know) and go to http://centos.org/. Check out if you find something like build logs, some state how far the process of creating CentOS6 is, what packages still need to be reworked, how someone can help reworking these packages, ... and you will see that these informations are not visible. They might exist but they are not visible for someone going to the web page and try to get these informations. So if there is a link on the front page pointing to a guide how to setup a build environment for CentOS6 locally and how to report issues and patches to bugs.c.o and how you can get build logs of the current rebuild process, everything is fine because anyone can start working on open items and contribute to the project to make things happen faster. To make it clear, I think bugs.c.o is a good thing but useless for anyone who don't have a local build environment.
[...] havent we already been over this ground repeatedly a few times on the list already ?
No, nothing changed till now, the only statement so far was something like this can be discussed when CentOS6 is out. So the problems still exist and the question is, will the problems be really solved when CentOS6 is out? If so, I will shut my mouth and we can follow up with the discussion when CentOS6 is out. If everything stays as it is, I have to rethink if CentOS is the best solution for my needs.
Kind regards, Thomas