[CentOS-devel] CentOS 8/7.7

[Joe Doss]

On 9/18/19 9:03 AM, Lamar Owen wrote:
> You're making the right steps to start off, that's for sure.

Awesome! Thanks for taking the time to respond to me.

>> Is there a new user doc I can read or a place to start? 
> There are some pages in the wiki about building from source out of git, 
> mainly https://wiki.centos.org/Sources but I'm not sure if you would 
> consider them 'new user' docs or not; depends on what you mean by 'new 
> user' I guess.

I should have said new contributor, not user. How do I contribute back 
to the CentOS project? It is pretty clear in this thread we have the 
developers saying "be patient we are a small team", but I don't see any 
clear path to offer my time to help like I do with the Fedora project. 
CentOS 8 is very much in my critical path for success within my 
organization. I want to use my personal and work time to contribute 
back. How do I do that?

> It's giving you a 'forbidden' because it's not released.  As a previous 
> thread started out asking about 'what is Release Work' (which hasn't 
> been answered), there is a lot of logistics involved in releasing 
> something as large and as 'in-demand' as CentOS 8. Mirrors have to be 
> populated, infrastructure has to be prepared, etc, for a release like 
> this; mirrors have been syncing for a while, I would guess, as moving 
> multiple gigabytes of data out to hundreds of servers is not an 
> instantaneous thing.  The last thing you want is a partial mirror being 
> used before it's ready, thus the 'forbidden' results from the mirrors 
> and from the main CentOS koji; bandwidth, even if you have 10gb/s worth, 
> is scarce when you consider the thousands of people who are 'on pins and 
> needles' to get their grubby little paws on fresh CentOS 8 ISOs and 
> packages.......
> 
> So, the most important thing is to be patient; I'm probably going to 
> wait until at least the 27th to even start downloading; I've waited this 
> long, three more days isn't going to kill me.

Fedora builds off of Koji are not held captive, so why should they be 
for CentOS? We can download Fedora builds without issue off the composes 
or off of the Fedora Koji. I am pretty sure if the Fedora Project can 
pull this off, the CentOS project can get more resources from Red Hat to 
sustain the small subset of people that are technical enough to know 
about the CentOS Koji and the builds that are hosted there.

I highly doubt anyone that is going to use these builds for production 
and if they are able to figure how to get things going on their end, it 
is on them to support it. How can anyone help if the project keeps 
everything walled off?


> Now, back to the idea of help.  I have a bit of experience doing 
> rebuilds, as I rebuilt CentOS 5.x for IA64 after CERN dropped SLC5 
> support on IA64, for our Altix 350 system (since retired).  This was 
> 2012 timeframes, by the way.  Everyone here remembers the triple-threat 
> release a few years back, when CentOS 6 was near release, CentOS 5.6 was 
> near release, and CentOS 4.10 (I think it was 4.10, at least) was near 
> release; that's the 'Old Days' of the OP on this thread, incidentally. I 
> remember all those offers for help rebuilding packages, especially 5.6 
> packages.  Well, as I was stepping up releases from the last SLC IA64 
> release (5.4), I found out the hard way what caused the 5.6 delay (if 
> you want details, I can go back to my notes).  See, to get a truly 
> binary-compatible-to-RedHat distribution, packages sometimes have to be 
> built in very specific orders, thus causing the actual package build 
> process to be single-threaded, in a manner of speaking, at least back in 
> 5.x days.
> 
> But there's a deeper thing here; there's a trust issue for all the 
> people who use CentOS in a production setting; this is why packages are 
> signed, and it's why there's a process for signing packages. CentOS is a 
> trusted source, and getting the builds and signing too distributed can 
> dilute the basis for that trust.  It's kindof like before my middle 
> daughter got engaged (and then married less than a month later); I told 
> her that I had to know the boy before I could give the boy my blessing 
> (so they forged ahead without my blessing.... one of those things).  Not 
> that I have reason to distrust you or anyone else; it's just that I 
> don't have a proven reason to trust you, because I don't know you.  I've 
> run CentOS long enough to trust the current CentOS team, as well as some 
> former members of that team (Hi, Russ!) rather deeply, because I've 
> known them a long time (even though I've never met most of them in person).

Trust? Deeper things? I fully understand how CentOS is built and why 
there are things in place to ensure a high quality release. I'm not 
going to repackage the koji build as a CentOS prerelease and hoodwink 
anyone.

I think this kind of response nails my feelings on the problems we are 
seeing in this thread. I don't need to know you Lamar. You don't even 
have to know me either. I want to get access to the builds so I can 
start my own testing. I accept any issues that I find. I am capable 
enough to not only figure out how to fix my own problems, but I am also 
very willing submit them back to the project in any form that is useful. 
(or not if that is useful too)

I bet there are tons of people on this mailing list right now that are 
willing to beta test and provide meaningful help to the project to push 
the "Release CentOS cart" forward. This entire thread wouldn't be a 
thing if we had open access to the builds, a clear expectation that you 
are on your own if you use them, and a clear path to contribute back to 
the small team that is responsible for creating the next release of CentOS.

I know there are people willing to help with future releases. The CentOS 
project needs to enable us to do so. Fedora has a beta. RHEL has a beta. 
Why doesn't CentOS?

Joe




-- 
Joe Doss
joe at solidadmin.com