With the end of life of CentOS 8, and a focus on CentOS 8 and 9 stream, the Infrastructure SIG has been discussing what to do about building of RPMs and testing of RPMs. The choice of distribution has impacts on what we test and support as installation OS targets for Foreman and its plugins. I will use the following terms thusly:
- tested: operating systems that our release pipelines test on ensure work prior to release
- supported: operating systems that should work for installation but are not tested
The two options we have for EL8 (and eventually 9) are:
Option 1: Build against RHEL
If we build against RHEL we could in theory have the following:
Tested: CentOS 8 Stream
Supported: RHEL, Alma, Rocky
There is more complexity in build environment to build against RHEL as per the RHEL open source initiative we could have the repositories local to our Koji as long as we ensure they are not publicly accessible. The trade off to building against RHEL is we have to wait for RHEL to be released to update our builds against the newer version and could encounter a period of breakage either stemming from CentOS Stream or within latest RHEL itself. For EL9, we would not be able to begin building until RHEL 9 was released (we might could consider RHEL 9 beta). We would be sitting in the middle of the ecosystem and reacting rather than at the beginning of the ecosystem and being more proactive.
Option 2: Build against CentOS Stream
If we build against CentOS Stream we could in theory have the following:
Tested: CentOS 8 Stream
Supported: N/A
The obvious downside for some users would be that we are only targeting CentOS stream as our EL OS for installation. This does have the benefit of ensuring we are crafting a well working and targeted experience for using our software. Building against CentOS stream means we can catch build and install issues much sooner for the EL ecosystem.
CentOS 8 ends of life at the end of 2021 and the repositories will move to CentOS vault with no further updates. Thus we have some leeway but need to take action on our direction with EL ecosystem.
To that end, we are looking for community input on which direction we go based on what the community needs are balanced with the maintenance cost. Please let us know your thoughts in this RFC so we can arrive at the best decision possible.
If you are still reading this, I likely got something wrong and will edit the post with any corrections pointed out to me.