On Thu, Apr 2, 2015 at 12:22 PM, Les Mikesell lesmikesell@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Apr 2, 2015 at 10:56 AM, Karanbir Singh mail-lists@karan.org wrote:
os-release has been at /7/ since the first CentOS 7 release - what extra value does having 7.1 in there bring ? At best it just says that your centos-release rpm has not been updated and/or there is no system level state change that required metadata in that file.
If you know that some feature was added or bug fixed in RH 7.1, or more relevant, your boss or security officer or application developer knows that, there is very much value in being able to say that CentOS 7.1-whatever includes the same features/fixes, and that your automated inventory database will show which machines have been updated to that version. Otherwise you'll spend the rest of the day discussing how fix x is done in package-revs-n1 fix y is in package-rev-n2 and how to check for it. Sometimes you need the latter detail, but mostly not, especially for the application guys.
This is the crux of the issue in my mind. The complete departure from the upstream naming conventions, weather they are "correct" or "relevant" or not, is a major change and is becoming a major hassle, maybe not from an engineering point of view, but from a practical, day-to-day one.
Change is fine, but it requires work to deal with. And most of us don't have time to deal with major changes. This is a major change from past practice for CentOS, and there are many operational implications of it that apparently haven't been considered.