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

Neal Gompa

ngompa13 at gmail.com
Mon Dec 28 16:50:38 UTC 2020


On Mon, Dec 28, 2020 at 9:26 AM Phil Perry <pperry at elrepo.org> wrote:
>
> 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.
>

I mean "CentOS Linux" as in the RHEL rebuild. That's still a thing
that exists for a while yet.



-- 
真実はいつも一つ!/ Always, there's only one truth!


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