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

On ma, 28 joulu 2020, Ljubomir Ljubojevic wrote:
>On 12/27/20 6:27 PM, Alexander Bokovoy wrote:
>>
>> The simplest solution for these use cases is to actually report a bug
>> against RHEL and/or CentOS Stream and make sure it is reproducible. This
>> would be the quickest way to get the issue backed out or fixed in a
>> number of days. There are means to remove broken packages from RHEL
>> composes and I hope we'd have a way to propagate those 'removals' to
>> CentOS Stream.
>>
>> This is something worth raising as a feature request if it doesn't exist
>> yet.
>>
>>
>Several people explained how bug reports like that tend end up without
>solution and even response while Red hat continues to do what they
>want... So I would not hold my breath that community is going to jump
>through hoops any more. Majority will just migrate to another clone,
>leaving developers to play "find the bug" with Red Hat.

I am personally not happy with 'old' CentOS because I couldn't and still
cannot influence even a tiny bit of what happens with CentOS after a RHEL
release. Multiple times my components were broken in CentOS because they
weren't built in the right order and weren't rebuilt for months even
after users opened CentOS bugs, with zero transparency into what's
happens. 

I am one of those people who can fix the bugs raised against CentOS
Stream. I would like to see them raised. My QE teams will certainly
treat CentOS Stream bugs similar to RHEL bugs as that improves our
ability to deliver RHEL releases with less issues. In the end, you are
the ones who get the benefit once the fixes are out there.

At least in my area of interest other distributions aren't better than
'old' CentOS or RHEL, there is no magic wand that could help fix issues
without them being reported and addressed by engineers involved in
upstream projects. If your's only contribution is by raising bugs,
please continue doing so, it helps, really.

>Btw., we were warned that many Red Hat people who can decide about these
>kind of issues are on a holiday so those who want a debate about Stream
>issues are generally waiting for holidays to pass.

I am on a holiday myself, thus can actually spend some time engaging in
these discussions. Mailing lists are great for distributed
communications, both in geographic disperse and in time. Debates aren't
bike-scheding. If there are bits that can be evolved and elaborated on,
they don't fade with time simply because a discussion has happened over
that time.

-- 
/ Alexander Bokovoy
Sr. Principal Software Engineer
Security / Identity Management Engineering
Red Hat Limited, Finland