[CentOS-devel] Updates from today

Thu Mar 10 18:05:26 UTC 2011
Johnny Hughes <johnny at centos.org>

On 03/10/2011 11:20 AM, Zenon Panoussis wrote:
> 
> On 03/10/2011 05:50 PM, Johnny Hughes wrote:
> 
> 
> [de-branding]
> 
>> There is nothing magic ... if you have the .centos SRPM and the upstream
>> SRPM, then you have everything I use.  
> 
> Of course there is no magic, but there is a lot of work already invested.
> Ready patches for example. Anyone who has those patches could already be
> testing them on the next release, instead of starting off from scratch by
> making them.
> 

Patches are in the SRPM ... in the SOURCES directory.  I told exactly
how I build packages.  Everything is in the SRPM.

> [dependencies]
> 
>> It has been made public: 
>> http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/2011-February/106570.html
> 
> Thank you, that's yet another posting I had missed.
> 
>> But, you need to understand that the list is fluid.  If a package does
>> not build because of a hidden build requirement, that is a bug.  You
>> have to figure it out to get it to build, but the next time you build
>> that package you will likely NOT need to change the build root as they
>> will likely have fixed the issue by then.  
> 
> Over the years I have reported a number of these myself upstream and my
> experience is varied. Sometimes they fix things, sometimes not. Having
> a summary of all quirks that were needed to build a release makes building
> the next one so much easier.
> 
>>> That last part, "easily accessible", is just as important as "public".
>>> There might be lots of tidbits of information on this list, but finding
>>> them is a drag.
> 
>> Why is that important.  Red Hat did not tell me how to build it.  The
>> purpose of the CentOS Project is to produce an operating system that you
>> can choose to use or not to use.  It is not to tell someone else how to
>> produce an operating system.  Why should I tell someone how to build a
>> replacement OS to CentOS.  That makes no sense at all.
> 
> I'm not telling you to tell someone how to build a replacement of CentOS.
> I'm saying that you should tell everyone how to build CentOS itself. That
> would guarantee an influx of developers and CentOS' long-term survival,
> also past the point when you decide to swap your keyboard for a hammock
> in some tropical island.

CentOS does not rely on one person.  We have a QA team of 30 or so
people and at least 6 developers who could build OS from scratch.  The
problem is that this stuff takes time.  We build it, we test it, we fix
it, we build it again.  If I make a change and respin the OS, it takes a
day for that to get onto the QA and another day (or two) for them to
test it.

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