[CentOS-devel] Update: State of CentOS Linux 8, and CentOS Stream

On Tue, Jan 14, 2020 at 10:13 PM Phil Perry <pperry at elrepo.org> wrote:
>
> On 14/01/2020 18:57, Rich Bowen wrote:
>
> Hi Rich,
>
> > We wanted to update you on what is happening, largely out of sight to
> > most of the community, on the CentOS Linux 8 front. We have appreciated
> > the patience of the community, but we understand that your patience
> > won’t last forever.
> >
> > A lot of the work in rebuilding RHEL sources into CentOS Linux is
> > handled by automation scripts. Due to the changes between RHEL 7 and
> > RHEL 8, many of these scripts no longer work, and had to be fixed to
> > reflect the new layout of the buildroot. This work has been largely
> > completed, allowing us to pull the source from Red Hat without a lot of
> > manual work. This, in turn, should make the process of rebuilding RHEL
> > 8.2 go much more smoothly than RHEL 8.0 and 8.1 have done.
> >
> > Once 8.1 has been released, work will begin on bringing this new
> > codebase, along with CentOS Stream, in to CBS
> > (https://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/CommunityBuildSystem) so that SIGs can
> > build packages for CentOS Linux 8 and CentOS Stream.
> >
>
> Given the time it's taking to get releases out, and the 6 month
> timescale between RHEL8 point releases, I'm struggling to visualise how
> this is going to work in practice.
>
> What new features are you planning for CentOS 8.1 Stream and when will
> the community get to see/test them? Given that RHEL8.1 is now 2.5 months
> old and RHEL8.2 is due to be released in 3.5 months, I'm expecting a
> RHEL8.2 beta soon. At that point hasn't the ship already sailed? How are
> you expecting to get new stuff out to the community to test and feed
> back on in time for that to feed into the RHEL8.2beta development
> process in a meaningful way? I'm assuming that the RHEL8.2beta
> development process is already well underway.
>
> Perhaps I'm just confused as to what the best/fastest route is to feed
> stuff back into RHEL (and hence CentOS). When we have verified bugs and
> patches, should we be raising RHEL bugzilla reports with patches and
> asking Red Hat to fix issues, or should we be submitting patches to
> CentOS Stream as the upstream (midstream?) of RHEL? The recent high
> profile make bug/patch springs to mind - we submitted directly to Red
> Hat as there was no current process to submit to CentOS Stream.
>
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1774790
>
> Still, the process is frustratingly slow. What we would like is a
> process to make a commit/pull request to the CentOS Stream git tree and
> have the CentOS Stream build system rebuild and push the package for
> testing, in a fast automated fashion. And then hopefully see that fix in
> the next minor release of RHEL. Or maybe I completely misunderstand how
> you see the process working?

That seems about right. That's the sort of workflow we'd like to implement.

Unlike other parts of the industry, here in true open source fashion
we do it all in the open. Announce intent, then implement ... so yes
there is some lag in getting this working. We're assembling the teams
to help build that workflow now.

RHEL is a product that has thousands of upstream projects. This is
especially true of the minor versions, where we pull in backports and
rebases from those projects directly. As a result, for better or
worse, RHEL internally at Red Hat has myriad workflows to bring in
changes from upstream.

The work of CentOS to rebuild RHEL is simple compared to building the
contribution workflow to tie to bring things into RHEL. Nevertheless
we're pursuing what you describe. Sorry that it seems frustratingly
slow.

Cheers,

Stef

-- 
Stef Walter
Linux Engineering
Red Hat