[CentOS-devel] Balancing the needs around the CentOS platform

lsoOn Sat, Dec 19, 2020 at 11:28 PM Nico Kadel-Garcia <nkadel at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 19, 2020 at 12:29 PM Matthew Miller <mattdm at mattdm.org> wrote:
> > On Sat, Dec 19, 2020 at 04:34:53AM -0500, Mark Mielke wrote:
> > > 2. Minor release milestones to stabilize branches. We have breakage
> > > with most minor release upgrades, and the stabilization process is an
> > > important method of isolating users from being affected by this. This
> > > is why CentOS 8 Stream is being said "for developers", while RHEL 8
> > > would be "for production". It is being said, because it is a real
> > > thing. If you truly believed minor release milestones were unnecessary
> > > for CentOS 8 Stream, then you would also believe that minor release
> > > milestones were unnecessary for RHEL 8.
> > It's important to note that the CentOS Linux rebuild never actually had
> > this. RHEL minor releases are actually branches, and you can stay at a minor
> > release and still get security updates. For CentOS Linux, a minor release is
> > a point where updates pause for a while while the team scrambles to rebuild
> > a large update of many packages and then those packages all updated in a big
> > chunk _on the single CentOS branch_. So this is always been extra value that
> > Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides that CentOS Linux did not
> Am I missing something? The last time I stared at RHEL release media
> the packages and their versions were a one-for-one match to the CentOs
> point release, except for the CentOS-only packages such as
> "epel-release" and packages with distinct trademarks or licenses. It's
> been a couple of years since I grabbed RHEL release media, I usually
> use a licensed RHEL OS image as needed these days. Are you saying the
> CentOS point releases do *not* match as closely as possible the
> corresponding RHEL point release?

I'm pretty sure Matthew Miller is talking about EUS releases, and he
is missing that all RHEL minor releases are actually branches whether
EUS or not. Red Hat is developing N+1, and N+2, while publishing N,
and mirroring N to CentOS 7 and 8. I covered this in more detail in my
other posts.

There does seem to be a pattern that the people who think CentOS 8
Stream is not a big change, seem to be the same people who are not
really aware of these additional branches. I also see how Red Hat
presenting a "c8" branch might re-enforce the belief that CentOS 8 is
already basically the same as CentOS 8 Stream. Unfortunately, this
means that there will be a surprise and shock factor when the light
bulb goes on and they realize what just happened.


--
Mark Mielke <mark.mielke at gmail.com>