Hi,
We still have a problem with CentOS-5 updates not being available up to 3 to 7 days after they were announced by Red Hat and appeared on the FTP server.
Additionally, CentOS 4.8 still hasn't been pushed to the QA team.
Let's take 2 examples for C-5 updates, the recent kernel update and the firefox update. According to what I can find:
* firefox 3.0.11-2.el5_3
timestamp on RH ftp: 09 Jun 2009 12:55 announced by RH: 11 Jun 2009 19:22 CEST
built by SL: 12 Jun 2009 17:30 CEST timestamp on SL ftp: 12 Jun 2009 19:39 CEST announced by SL: 12 Jun 2009 22:23 CEST
built by CentOS: 17 Jun 2009 03:03 CEST timestamp on mirror: 19 Jun 2009 11:05 CEST announced by CentOS: 19 Jun 2009 11:07 CEST
* kernel 2.6.18-128.1.15.el5
timestamp on RH ftp: 15 Jun 2009 05:22 announced by RH: 16 Jun 2009 18:39 CEST
built by CentOS: 17 Jun 2009 02:16 CEST timestamp on mirror: 19 Jun 2009 09:43 CEST announced by CentOS: 19 Jun 2009 09:44 CEST
Having te kernel 60h after Red Hat is questionable, but having firefox arrive more than week after Red Hat announced it is probably harder to explain.
The kernel update is of severity Important, but the firefox update is deemed Critical.
Apart from that, we haven't seen CentOS-4.8 hit the QA team for 1 month now. No reports of what is going on or what is stalling the release. Since the QA team will need some time to test installations, we can expect another 2 weeks delay, which would make it 7+ weeks before it hits the mirrors if it would be delivered today, which is unlikely.
So I don't want to be the guy who is serving you the bad news, but unless we do something about it from an organisational point of view, things are unlikely to improve.
So, what can we do about this to improve the situation ?