[CentOS-devel] Missing packages on Devel repo

Thu Nov 18 16:42:45 UTC 2021
Brian Stinson <brian at bstinson.com>

On Thu, Nov 18, 2021, at 10:17, Trevor Hemsley wrote:
> On 17/11/2021 21:45, Brian Stinson wrote:
>> 
>> On Wed, Nov 17, 2021, at 14:47, Odilon Junior wrote:
>>> Hi, 
>>> 
>>> As the $SUBJECT says, after the latest release of Centos 8,  the Devel[1] repo is not populated.
>>> 
>>> I can see the packages for 8.4.2105[2]. Is this expected for this latest release?
>>> 
>>> ---
>>> Regards,
>>> Odilon
>>> 
>>> 1 - http://mirror.centos.org/centos/8/Devel/x86_64/
>>> 2 - https://vault.centos.org/8.4.2105/Devel/
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> CentOS-devel mailing list
>>> CentOS-devel at centos.org
>>> https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos-devel
>>> 
>> 
>> That is expected. Just a reminder CentOS Linux 8 goes End Of Life in December: https://www.centos.org/centos-linux-eol/ please plan accordingly.
>> 
>> If you need a package that was previously in the Devel repo to support your migration you may download from vault.centos.org or from the buildsystem: https://koji.mbox.centos.org
>> 
> 
> You just don't get this do you. At all. This is about Red Hat and its word and whether that still means anything.
> 
> The announcement late last year said that CentOS Linux 8 would go EOL at the end of 2021, on 31/12. 
> 
> It did not say that you would stop supporting it in mid-November. 
> 
> It had no mention in that initial announcement about 8.5 and what would happen to that until those questions were asked during the many many questions that were asked following that initial bombshell. The main questions that were asked about 8.5 was "will there be a CentOS 8.5" and "will there be any updates to it". At that point, the EOL announcement was amended to include something about 8.5 to clarify the situation. The answer was meant to make clear that support was ongoing until the end of the year but that *if* 8.5 was not ready in time for the announced EOL date then work would continue on it until it was released. 
> 
> If the "clarification" was also meant to shift the annouced EOL date backwards from 2021/12/31 then it made no mention of that. It's only now, once 8.5 has actually been released that Red Hat are backing away from the announced EOL date and trying to claim that the mention of 8.5 in it means that there won't be any more updates even though we are still 6 weeks away from the actual EOL date. 
> 
> The amended announcement did not say "or whichever comes first". The very top line in it says "CentOS Linux 8 will reach End Of Life (EOL) on December 31st, 2021". There is also no mention of only building and releasing packages that are of a certain VCSS score. What it actually says is:
> 
> "We *will* be shipping a rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.5 once it is released, even if that means that this is released slightly after the EOL date. 
> The release of a RHEL point release is often accompanied, immediately afterwards, by a set of zero-day updates. We *will* be providing this content as part of the final CentOS Linux 8 release. There will, however, be no more updates to the CentOS Linux 8 content after that time.
> 
> Additionally, with this deadline falling during a time when many of our team, as well as many of our users, will be out of the office, we intend to bend the usual EOL process by keeping this content available until January 31st. 
> At that time, or in the event of a serious security bug in this time window (Defined as anything with a VCSS v3 score of 9 or greater), this content will be removed from our mirrors, and moved to vault.centos.org where it will be archived permanently"
> 
> 
> That does not say "we'll only build and release packages with a VCSS score of > 9". It says "after December 31st, if 8.5 is not ready in time, then we will build it and release it along with all zero day fixes but if there is an update with a VCSS score > 9 AFTER the EOL date, then we will archive it to vault early".
> 
> Yes, I get that everyone should be stopping using CentOS Linux 8. It's going away. But you publicly announced that it would be supported until the end of the year. Multiple times. There will be people out there who are in mid-migration to something else and thought they had another 6 weeks do complete it. 
> 
> So can we trust Red Hat to keep its word? A few years ago, I would not have hesitated to say "of course they will" but now? I'll watch what you *do* not what you *say*. 
> 
> Trevor Hemsley

The discussion about the interpretation of the EOL announcement is a good one, we should keep that going. The Devel repo is a slightly different topic though. 

If you remember how the Devel repo was meant to work, it was meant to contain -devel packages that we've accepted into one of the core repos in the middle of a minor-release: https://wiki.centos.org/FAQ/CentOS8/UnshippedPackages

For every CentOS Linux point-release the intent was to clear out the Devel repo because that content is expected to show up in BaseOS, AppStream, or PowerTools (see what happened in this particular instance with quota-devel). The other goal was to ship this content *somewhere* because we couldn't allow downloads from the buildsystem at the time. Devel was always a hack around these 2 constraints.

We have something better, though. We revisited requirements, put some infrastructure behind the buildsystem, and opened up downloads for folks. Since May, folks have been able to use the entire buildroot repos directly from the buildsystem if they so choose: https://koji.mbox.centos.org/kojifiles/repos/dist-c8-build/latest/

--Brian
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