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

On 28/12/2020 12:29, Neal Gompa wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 28, 2020 at 7:25 AM Alexander Bokovoy <abokovoy at redhat.com> wrote:
>>
>> On ma, 28 joulu 2020, Phil Perry wrote:
>>> And when the above situation arises (an elrepo or OEM driver fails to
>>> build and/or weak-link against a Stream kernel), what would be the
>>> process to fix that? Elrepo drivers are developed against and built
>>> for RHEL kernels, so when they fail to build for Stream, that won't
>>> get fixed for upto 6 months until the next RHEL point release. Or to
>>> put it another way, elrepo is a downstream project, downstream of
>>> RHEL.
>>
>> If Elrepo drivers have actual developers, getting 6 months advance
>> notification of their driver's failures against upcoming RHEL could be
>> valuable to plan and fix the issues in due time.
>>

Yes, absolutely, we (elrepo developers) will likely use the RHEL 
development (Stream) kernel to assess what is broken and what needs 
fixing, and to help develop those fixes ahead of the next RHEL point 
release kernel.

At present we aim to get our build systems updated, and to rebase, fix 
and release any broken packages as soon as possible after the RHEL point 
release is public. Looking at the RHEL8.3 point release on 3/11/2020, we 
had packages released daily on 4-9th November so it took us just under a 
week to update all our infrastructure, rebase code, fix build issues, 
rebuild sign and release our whole repository. Not bad for a voluntary 
effort in addition to holding down 40h/week $dayjob. Being able to 
develop fixes in advance will for sure help us to reduce that time frame.

> 
> In general, it would make *my* life easier if elrepo drivers were
> tracking the RHEL kernel development and getting fixed along the way,
> because it's a pain when I have to deal with customers who use our
> stuff and can't upgrade because of broken drivers. That is the
> situation *now* with CentOS Linux.
> 

If elrepo drivers are broken on CentOS Linux (not Stream), you should 
file a bug, either with elrepo if the driver also does not work on RHEL 
and we will fix it, or with CentOS if the driver works on RHEL but not 
on CentOS Linux and CentOS can fix it.

If by "CentOS Linux", you actually mean CentOS Stream, by definition 
that's never going to happen. Elrepo may use the Stream kernel to see 
what's coming and help develop fixes for the next release of RHEL (see 
comments above), or to contribute our fixes back upstream, but elrepo 
driver packages are built on RHEL build systems against RHEL kernels - 
we can not build against something that has not been released yet, and 
even if we could, those packages would not work for all our current RHEL 
(and CentOS Linux 8) users who are running 8.3 *now* and will continue 
to run 8.3 kernels for at least the next 4-5 months.