[CentOS-devel] De-branding in CentOS Stream 9

Sat Dec 4 20:50:08 UTC 2021
Neal Gompa <ngompa13 at gmail.com>

On Sat, Dec 4, 2021 at 3:21 PM Phil Perry <pperry at elrepo.org> wrote:
>
> On 04/12/2021 17:16, Neal Gompa wrote:
> > On Sat, Dec 4, 2021 at 11:58 AM Phil Perry <pperry at elrepo.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> On 23/11/2021 12:24, Alex Iribarren wrote:
> >>> Hi all,
> >>>
> >>> While trying to run the CentOS functional tests on CS9[*], I noticed
> >>> that several fail because of branding issues. For example,
> >>> p_httpd/httpd_centos_brand_server_tokens.sh expects the server string to
> >>> match `Apache.*\ (CentOS)`, when in fact the server line is:
> >>>
> >>> Server: Apache/2.4.51 (Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9) OpenSSL/3.0.0
> >>>
> >>> This got me thinking about how de-branding is supposed to work in CS9. I
> >>> would guess the usual process would have to be reversed now, where Red
> >>> Hat would remove the CentOS brand from CS9 packages and add the Red Hat
> >>> brand for the RHEL 9.0 builds, but clearly this isn't happening yet. I
> >>> guess this is an oversight?
> >>>
> >>> Cheers,
> >>> Alex
> >>>
> >>> [*] I know, I know, but I have to run *something* before you guys
> >>> release your own functional test suite for CS9!
> >>
> >> In the absence of anyone from the project commenting, I'm wondering how
> >> RHEL branding could have possibly got into a CentOS Stream release in
> >> the first place?
> >>
> >> The pictorial representation we are given is clear:
> >>
> >> https://blog.centos.org/2021/12/introducing-centos-stream-9/
> >>
> >> CentOS Stream is forked from Fedora Rawhide and exists upstream of any
> >> RHEL release so it's hard to envisage how this could possibly have
> >> happened. Surely now it is a case of RH removing CentOS branding for
> >> their RHEL release if Stream is truly the upstream development of RHEL?
> >>
> >> Wouldn't it be simpler to just call it RHEL Stream and do away with the
> >> extra layer of obfuscation and confusion, as that's more what it looks
> >> like (if it walks like a duck...)
> >
> > That would be a significant deviation of Red Hat's own brand strategy.
> > *All* of Red Hat's products have a "project brand" and a "product
> > brand".
> >
> > This has two major advantages:
> >
> > 1. It enshrines branding as an aspect of differentiation for the Red
> > Hat offering
> > 2. It makes it easy for third parties to make their own branded
> > product offerings based on the project and strengthen the ecosystem.
> >
> > In this particular case with Apache HTTPD, it's happening because
> > CentOS Stream uses the "Red Hat Enterprise Linux" BZ support product,
> > and that's how it gets set at build-time.
> >
> > See here: https://gitlab.com/redhat/centos-stream/rpms/httpd/-/blob/9d1c57410b67b48856876b6068b36bd3d1aa32d5/httpd.spec#L6
> >
> > It's an easy fix, I'll have it proposed momentarily.
> >
> >
> >
>
> Hi Neal,
>
> Thanks for the explanation, most helpful. However, again I'm confused as
> the spec file referenced above has two references in the changelog to
> having been rebuilt for RHEL 9 Beta. Again, how can anything that has
> happened downstream in a RHEL 9 Beta end up back in the upstream Stream
> product? The fact the two changelog entries are 2 months apart suggest
> there is little separation between the RHEL 9 Beta and CentOS Stream 9.
> Clearly the pictorial representation presented of the relationship
> between Stream and RHEL is not an accurate one.
>

So far, I haven't seen any updates released for RHEL 9 beta, but any
updates would be released from auto-rebuilds for c9s to the rhel9.0
branch internally, most likely.

I hope there is a refresh soon, because the current media calls itself
beta0, which implies beta1 or beta2 composes will exist.

If you think of the development process of CentOS Stream and RHEL like
how Fedora packages are developed, it'll probably be easier to
understand. That is, c9s is the head branch, and developers would
merge that back into rhel9.0 and rhel9.0-pre branches.


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