Questions about CentOS-8

1. What is CentOS Stream?

Please see also CentOS Stream FAQ

Short version is: We're working with RHEL leadership to help make RHEL development more transparent and collaborative with community engagement.

Lots of the engineering work is still "TBD" to make this happen, because we wanted to design/develop this in public collaboration with Red Hat as much as possible. RHEL has always been developed internally. Now this is going to be done in the public, allowing interaction earlier. And we're calling that "CentOS Stream".

1.1. Will there be multiple streams or just one?

Currently there is just one stream. We (CentOS and RH) may choose to add more in the future. (please keep in mind, lots of this is *handwave* so sometimes technical details will drive policy, other times the other way around).

1.2. What would be the best way to get our library always up-to-date taking advantage of Streams?

We have to realize that stream is intended to target the next RHEL release, so if you didn't see packages being rapidly rebased before, you probably shouldn't expect that to change. If it's a simple fix, a feature addition that you've backported, that sort of thing, then the vision would be a pull request and discussion, with the goal of having that merged in.

We're also looking at what this means for repos like fasttrack and our SIG structures, as some things may be more applicable there.

A rough analogy is "When RHEL 8.1 is out, CentOS Stream content would be the development of what should become 8.2".

1.3. Could new packages be introduced via Stream? How does the contribution model for Stream differ from EPEL packagers?

The 'official' CentOS Stream packages will reflect RHEL development code. If it's not accepted in RHEL development it won't be in the 'official' Stream release.

Ignoring lots of the "we haven't built it yet" mechanics, contributing to a SIG or EPEL should be reasonably similar. There may be guidelines or policy variance, but that should be about it.

1.4. Given the necessary coordination between EL users and EPEL, how does EPEL enter the picture here?

The EPEL steering committee and the CentOS Project will need to work together to sort out how the two work together. I would like to see EPEL functional for both Stream and the standard release.

Yes, we'll have standards for submissions but we haven't worked out what those are yet. At a minimum baseline you can reasonably expect:

1. Code must be accepted by the upstream.
2. Code should be additive in nature (no turning things off or reducing functionality)
3. Code should come with documentation or an explanation for why the change should be accepted.
4. Code should come with tests where appropriate.

1.5. Shall we go for CentOS Stream or shall we target the Stream as *8* Stream?

There is only "CentOS Stream" for now, but for technical reasons we've tagged it in yum/dnf as '8-stream' via the stream variable. This is not an official answer.

1.6. Does the Stream kernel retain kABI compatibility with the RHEL/CentOS kernel during this development phase?

Insomuch as the next minor version of RHEL must retain kABI compatibility yes, if you find otherwise its a bug and please let us know.

2. I don't see the updates repo for CentOS-8

[updates] repo disappeared completely, as all updates are landing in either BaseOS and/or AppStream as they are built/tested and then pushed to mirrors.

3. There is an os and a kickstart directory for each architecture. The directory layout and contents seem rather identical.

kickstart is a snapshot of os at GA/release time. So that permits people to deploy with exactly same content without having a moving target, as BaseOS/!AppStream will be including updates as they land.

4. Where is the CentOS 8 codeready-developer equivalent repo?

The PowerTools repo has the packages from codeready-developer repo. "CodeReady linux Builder" could not be used because it is a trademarked name.

5. Where is the minimal iso and live media?

They are under discussion and will depend largely on how difficult it is.

6. Is there a way to upgrade CentOS-7 to CentOS-8? How about leapp?

In RHEL, in-place upgrade is supported throuth the leapp utility, but its use is extremely limited. See https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/8/html/upgrading_to_rhel_8/troubleshooting_upgrading-to-rhel-8#known-issues-upgrading-to-rhel-8 . There are currently no plans to provide leapp for CentOS.