[CentOS-devel] Is there any way to follow errata for Stream 8?

On Fri, Aug 20, 2021 at 1:37 PM Carl George <carl at redhat.com> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Aug 20, 2021 at 11:35 AM Neal Gompa <ngompa13 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Fri, Aug 20, 2021 at 12:28 PM Johnny Hughes <johnny at centos.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > On 8/19/21 11:21 PM, John R. Dennison wrote:
> > > > On Fri, Aug 20, 2021 at 06:05:49AM +0200, Steven Rosenberg via CentOS-devel wrote:
> > > >> Even emails like I see for for CentOS 7 would be ok.
> > > >
> > > > Considering that people have had nearly 2 years to get such notices out
> > > > for 8 and it's still not happened I wouldn't hold my breath if I were
> > > > you.
> > > >
> > >
> > > I would provide the information if i could, it is not easy to do because
> > > of modularity.
> > >
> > > The thing that builds el8 modules is called MBS .. if you look at MBS
> > > operations, one of the things that gets generated as part of the
> > > filename.  Here is an example:
> > >
> > > https://koji.mbox.centos.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=18783
> > >
> > > Part of the file name is dynamic, created by MBS at build time.  For
> > > example, one of the Source RPM filenames generated is:
> > >
> > > runc-1.0.0-74.rc95.module_el8.4.0+886+c9a8d9ad.src.rpm
> > >
> > > That is not it's filename in RHEL8.  In RHEL 8 .. the filename is:
> > >
> > > runc-1.0.0-74.rc95.module+el8.4.0+11822+6cc1e7d7.src.rpm
> > >
> > > There is no easy way to figure out the file names that match up between
> > > the two systems.  I took me 15 minutes to figure out that one filename,
> > > this does not scale.
> >
> > Everything prior to ".module" should be unique, identifiable, and
> > identical between RHEL and CentOS. MBS whacks %dist to add MBS
>
> Not exactly.  Sometimes RHEL maintainers add digits after %dist, which
> results in NVRs like foo-1.0-1.module_el8.4.0+123+a0a0a0a0.1.  It's
> not impossible to parse, but it's much more complicated that just
> ignoring everything after ".module".
>
> > information at the end. So there is some mapping. Additionally, when
> > the RPMs are imported from RHEL into CentOS, the original NVR is
> > present as a tag. Ignoring transmodrifier remapping modulemd commits
> > between RHEL and CentOS, you have enough baseline references to be
> > able to connect the dots because the RHEL dist-git shorthash is
> > present in the import tag, which would exist in the imported modulemd
> > before transmodification.
> >
> > That process could be automated, but I was never particularly
> > motivated to do it because of the historical attitude around providing
> > errata for CentOS users like Fedora users get.
>
> I'm not aware of any policy against allowing this in the project.  If
> there is I hope board members will speak up and clarify that.  I
> suspect it's more of a resource thing than anything.

I think lack of awareness of a publicly documented policy against
allowing this in the project is likely true, but also irrelevant.  We
don't have a policy against allowing a FreeBSD kernel or using
Ubuntu's version of gcc, yet we wouldn't do those.  In the absence of
meticulously detailed bylaws, we have historical precedent setting
defacto policy.  I don't expect this to change.

That being said, an update metadata mechanism for CentOS Stream is
certainly hampered by resource constraints both in terms of tooling
and in terms of the impact on the people developing the OS through the
CentOS Stream project.  For a continuously developed and continuously
delivered OS, we expect a large amount of churn on a day to day basis.
Updates are a regular occurence, and they're important either because
of fixes or because of new features.  Changes are documented in MRs,
RPM changelogs, and referenced bugs for those interested.

josh