[CentOS-devel] May we get all subpackages in C8S repos?

On Thu, Jan 21, 2021 at 5:35 AM Alfredo Moralejo Alonso
<amoralej at redhat.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> With the refocus of CentOS to Stream, i think it'd make sense to open the discussion about the missing subpackages (mainly devel ones) in the repos.
>
> While I understand that this was part of the idea of a "pure clone" of RHEL when working with CentOS Linux, now that stream is more intended to be used by devel community and not as a pure rebuild, I think there are reasons to change this policy.
>
> What'd be the best way to open this discussion?, is it being discussed already?, should this be a topic for the board?

This is indeed a great question and yes, we are already discussing it
internally.  To be quite frank, we've been discussing it for quite
some time and long before the CentOS Linux announcement.  There is a
balance to be struck between making CentOS Stream a viable platform
for ecosystem development, and faithfully representing what will
become the next RHEL minor release.

To date CentOS Linux and CentOS Stream have both stuck to "we provide
what RHEL provides" so that anyone consuming them gets parity with
RHEL.  This benefits users that have a mixed RHEL/CentOS environment,
and developers targeting the next release of RHEL by using CentOS
Stream because they build against what RHEL has available.  It
prevents them from inadvertently getting themselves into situations
where an application or package may build on a CentOS flavor, but fail
to run on RHEL due to missing dependencies or, less noticable, running
against unsupported content.

However, we have seen, and I have personally evaluated, MANY requests
for some of the unshipped packages for what are very valid reasons.
By working with the CentOS team, we have slowly adjusted our default
approach to these requests and we're continuing to evolve it.  I will
be working further with them to figure out how best to strike this
balance, particularly in light of CentOS Stream 9 coming and the
increased emphasis on using that directly for RHEL development.

I can promise no timelines and we have nothing concrete to share at
the moment, but please know we're taking this seriously and the
information the community is providing on what use cases they are
trying to solve is actually critical to coming up with the right
solutions.  The more we know about how our users leverage our projects
and products, the better we can make them.  Thanks in advance for your
patience.

josh