Release notes: bullet point list by category of all changes, include link to bug numbers. You can auto-generate changes using the release notes script.
CLI release notes are taken from the hammer-cli and hammer-cli-foreman changelogs
Link to installer changelogs and note versions being used
Headline features: half a dozen important features with a few sentences description each
Upgrade notes: all important notices that users must be aware of before upgrading
Preparing code
Make patch releases of installer modules that have important changes
Branch to MAJ.MIN-stable if recent changes to the module aren’t suitable for patch (x.y.z) release
Compare tagged packages in nightly vs. release koji tag and re-tag any updated dependencies that are required
Remove/change release field for any open Redmine tickets assigned to the release still (next minor, unset it or reject)
Ensure that code in git matches issues fixed in 2.1.0-rc3 in redmine. issues.rb can be used to generate a comparison between the two.
Note: If for some reason there was an issue with the tarballs that required uploading new tarballs, CDN cache should be invalidated so that the builders use the updated tarballs.
Tag foreman-release into foreman-client-2.1-rhel7 and foreman-client-2.1-el8, as this doesn’t happen automatically for those tags. Make sure the build matches the release.
koji tag-build foreman-client-2.1-rhel7 foreman-release-2.1.0-1.el7
koji tag-build foreman-client-2.1-el8 foreman-release-2.1.0-1.el8
Tomer, I hope this an appropriate place to make this comment.
It would be nice to see Foreman 2.1rc3 on CentOS 8 address the current incompatibility between Foreman 2.1rc{1,2} and EPEL on CentOS 8.{1,2}.
Problem: If you have installed Foreman on CentOS 8, you can not install EPEL without creating a versioning problem on dnf upgrade. This problem existed in Foreman 2.1rc1, but as the basic install does not require EPEL, I simply didn’t install epel-release on CentOS 8. The problem raises it head again if you try to install Ansible related functionality, as ansible is provided from the EPEL repository. I’ll summarize the problem here, as the referenced thread is very long.
The commands to reproduce the problem on a CentOS 8 system with Foreman 2.1rc{1,2} installed:
sudo yum -y upgrade # Nothing to do
sudo yum -y install epel-release
sudo yum -y upgrade # Problem see below
sudo yum -y erase epel-release
sudo yum -y upgrade # Nothing to do
Just the error generated for brevity:
Error:
Problem: package foreman-2.1.0-0.20.rc2.el8.noarch requires rubygem(net-ssh) = 4.2.0, but none of the providers can be installed
- cannot install both rubygem-net-ssh-5.1.0-2.el8.noarch and rubygem-net-ssh-4.2.0-2.el8.noarch
- cannot install both rubygem-net-ssh-4.2.0-2.el8.noarch and rubygem-net-ssh-5.1.0-2.el8.noarch
- cannot install the best update candidate for package rubygem-net-ssh-4.2.0-2.el8.noarch
- cannot install the best update candidate for package foreman-2.1.0-0.20.rc2.el8.noarch
(try to add '--allowerasing' to command line to replace conflicting packages or '--skip-broken' to skip uninstallable packages or '--nobest' to use not only best candidate packages)
Thanks for bringing it up! We have actually just updated the manual for 2.1 (Foreman :: Manual) for EL8 instructions, and indeed EPEL is not required on EL8.
I just looked through the EPEL package list, and while I didn’t find anything that I immediately require on my Foreman server/proxies, I wouldn’t be surprised if a Perl/Python/Ruby module or other tool (collectd, hwinfo, htop, dpkg, proftpd, …) from EPEL does not make someone’s list of required packages.
If the problem can’t be fixed, I would put a “N.B. section” in the CentOS 8 specific part of the manual, that this is a known issue, or you can guarantee someone will raise an issue about it
If I may be so bold, as a new to Foreman user, could I suggest that the QuickStart Guide, early on and possibly after the installation section, make the very specific recommendation that reading the “Provisioning Guide” will help make the understanding of Foreman for provisioning (which I assume is a common starting point for new users like myself), much much easier
I would also note that in the Foreman WebUI a number of plugins (and maybe other feature) documentation links are not valid; as the plugin website does not have a manual for the current version of the plugin - example: remote-execution is currently at version 3.3+ while the plugin website has documentation for 1.7 as the latest version.
Thanks for the feedback, I was literally discussing with @mcorr half an hour ago that we need to update some plugin manuals and see when and how we link to the new documentation guides from the main websites
FWIW, Ansible is in CentOS8 “configuration management” repo, and we recommend to pull it from there (that is not in the release notes, I think), instead of EPEL
But I see your point with being able to use epel for other reasons, lemme see
For the time being, you can add rubygem-net-ssh to the exclude list of the EPEL repo (something like exclude = rubygem-net-ssh in /etc/yum.repos.d/epel.repo), which should fix the issue for you.