[CentOS-devel] CATPR - Community Approved Third Party Repos

Thu Oct 1 08:08:35 UTC 2015
Haïkel <hguemar at fedoraproject.org>

2015-09-30 18:50 GMT+02:00 Johnny Hughes <johnny at centos.org>:
> On 09/29/2015 01:33 PM, Trevor Hemsley wrote:
>> On 29/09/15 17:35, Johnny Hughes wrote:
>>> On 09/28/2015 10:58 AM, Carl George wrote: >> Howdy, >> >> There are several "release" packages in the Extras
>> repository for SIGs and >> third party repositories. >> >>
>> centos-release-virt-common >> centos-release-openstack >> epel-release
>>>> > > EPEL is a special case .. as voted on by the CentOS Board. > >
>> Other ones are SIGs .. which is the way to get a release file into
>> extras. > > >> Currently there are no guidelines for other third party
>> repositories to be >> included, so I wrote this document. >> >>
>> https://wiki.centos.org/CarlGeorge/CATPR >> > > I am certainly open to
>> discussion .. however, there exists a way to make > this happen.  We
>> start a Hosting SIG and those RPMs get put in there and > built on our CBS.
>>
>> That appears to rule out elrepo and IUS ever being allowed to get into
>> extras which seems like a change of policy from before when it was:
>> "come up with some criteria by which we can make impartial decisions".
>> In both cases, they do not target CentOS alone, they exist to serve the
>> entire EL community. Making them build in CBS would then rule out their
>> repos being used on RHEL and/or SL. I don't think this is a good idea
>> either.
>
> Well .. RDO, who produces RPMs for RHEL, builds things on CBS.
>
> Packages built on CBS could also work on SL.
>
> I am NOT saying we can never get other repo release files in
> CentOS-Extras .. I am just saying that there is an easy way to make it
> happen right now and that is a SIG.
>
> I am only 11% of the CentOS Board .. so I'm sure there is room for
> movement in many directions on this.  But, personally, if we are
> offering an open program to get things into CentOS, I don't like making
> exceptions.  Everyone thinks THEIR exception is a good one and people
> want to keep their secret sauce (or build logs, root logs, or build
> root, etc) private.  I would rather everyone work thorough our community
> setup.  I think that is better for CentOS users.  They have one place to
> go to in order to find stuff.  If everyone uses it then it is better for
> everyone in the long run.
>
> We are having ppc64 and ppc64le being redone on our hardware and in a
> way that it can be integrated into CBS and this infrastructure.  The
> people doing that did not necessarily think that was a great idea either
> .. but I also think that will be better in the long run too.
>
> However, by all means, if users and the board want to create this
> mechanism, this is the place to hash it out.
>
>

Excellent answer.

My PoV as a SIG member:
Until then, EL community has been scattered, and now we have a common
place for people wanting to build features/products on top of EL while
*respecting* that diversity. (CBS is *Community* Build System not
CentOS)
If you care about compatibility against RHEL/SL/whatever => contribute
more CI against packages to detect incompatibilities.

In one year, for RDO packages, we found a *single* compatibility issue
with RHEL 7.1 was released, and it was solved rather quickly. For the
record, we had the very same issue internally with RHEL 7.0.
That's quite minor, and I prefer improving SIG infrastructure rather
wasting efforts on creating a new one from scratch.

CentOS is saving us a lot of efforts and time by providing that
infrastructure, so that such issues are not relevant to consider doing
otherwise.
Kudos to the Core SIG for their efforts.

H.