Software Collections SIG

SIG Status: Approved

Board Member Helping Bootstrap: JimPerrin

The Software Collections SIG will provide an upstream development area for various software collections and related tools. Developers can build on and extend existing SCLs, so they don't need to re-invent the wheel or take responsibility for packaging unnecessary dependencies.

Goals

• Act as upstream git repository for SoftwareCollections.org

• Work with developers to accept contributions for newer software collections.
• Establish release management duties to act as gateway to build/sign/distribute packages.

• Build and distribute software collections packages via centos.org as well as SoftwareCollections.org

• Work with upstreams like OpenShift Origin and foreman to provide compatibility.

Resource Requirements

• Full control of project space on http://git.centos.org - sig-sclo or similar.

• Rights for SIG release engineering to SIG branch under the /rpms namespace on http://git.centos.org for builder access / control

• Build privileges and related targets for http://cbs.centos.org/koji

• Ability to sign packages for distribution (being done after requests like https://bugs.centos.org/view.php?id=9819)

• Possible use of http://bugs.centos.org for tracking

Mailing lists and Communications

Work with the CentOS resources and any discussions around that will take place on the centos-devel mailing list. All work related to SCL, user interactions and upstream development will take place on the existing software collections mailing list.

The SIG is usually available also on irc at #centos-devel on irc.freenode.net.

Sync-up meeting

• at least in the beginning we hold (almost) weekly meeting on irc at #centos-devel on irc.freenode.net
• currently the meeting is held on Wednesday, 4pm UTC
• invitation to the irc meeting is sent to both mailing lists above usually one day before

SIG Membership

The SCLo SIG will have a steering committee and committers. The steering committee will initially consist of:

• Brian Gollaher

• HonzaHorak

• Radek Vokal
• Joe Orton
• Adam Miller
• Thomas Oulevey

• RemiCollet

List of other members is available at https://accounts.centos.org/group/members/sig-sclo.

New committers and members may be added by the steering committee. Steering committee members may interface with the CentOS board via the bootstrapping board member.

Committer privileges, once earned, do not expire unless revoked by the steering committee.

Getting involved

• see mailing lists and other communication channels info

• simple contribution doesn't require access to the dist-git and CentOS Build System (CBS)

• have you some bug reports, patches to contribute, other things to discuss, use the sclorg@redhat.com mailing list until there are some better ways (still working on this)

Some tips for active contributors

• get familiar with the Software Collections guidelines and Fedora Packaging Guidelines

• send introduction to the mailing list above (share some basic info about yourself, your intentions within SCLo SIG, which collection you plan to help with)

• for gaining access to CentOS Build System, follow steps at http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/CommunityBuildSystem

Roadmap and initial actions

• Define initial package set and deliver binaries.
• Establish git workflow
• Define criteria for contributions
• Provide documentation for community users as well as contributors
• Establish policy/practice for bug submissions
• Set release cadence and upgrade policies

Task list

The following are things that are on the todo list:

• prepare release package for RHEL, so RHEL users can install SCLs from sclo namespace

• implement authtag to be able to work with dist-git to store SRPMs for SCLo packages

  • until it is ready, we plan to import packages manually as requested here: https://www.redhat.com/archives/sclorg/2015-September/msg00005.html

• after dist-git is ready, we want to be able to build SRPMs from SCM, which is not possible from sclo/ namespace, so we'll need some tooling around this, so importing into rpms/ namespace is not manual

• tests for the packages live at https://github.com/sclorg/sclo-ci-tests, currently being integrated into CentOS CI

• CentOS packages were already introduced before, we need to solve update path for those (some have newer NVR than what we have in cbs now) -- ready for packages, not for centos-release-SCL to centos-release-scl package
• create a sub-page for docker images that are based on SCL
• softwarecollections.org to start using packages from cbs.c.o

This is a list of Software Collections from RHSCL 2.1 and their rebuild status inside SCLo SIG:

This is a list of Software Collections that are not part of RHSCL:

Requesting CBS tags

If you want to create tags and targets for a new collection follow these steps:

• Bring the idea of having new collection to the sync-up meeting (see above)
• Work together with the steering committee to choose appropriate name of the collection and namespace (rh or sclo)

• follow the example to ask for the tags/targets: https://bugs.centos.org/view.php?id=9661

Building packages for SCLo

Currently there is still no dist-git repositories available for the SCLo packages, but we can build packages directly like this:

cbs add-pkg sclo7-rh-mariadb100-rh-candidate --owner=sclo rh-mariadb100-mariadb
cbs build sclo7-rh-mariadb100-rh-el7 rh-mariadb100-mariadb-10.0.18-1.el7.src.rpm

Once build, we want to tag them to the -testing repos,

cbs add-pkg sclo7-rh-mariadb100-rh-testing --owner=sclo rh-mariadb100-mariadb
cbs tag-build sclo7-rh-mariadb100-rh-testing rh-mariadb100-mariadb-10.0.18-1.el7

Then we may test them by installing the packages from CBS repository:

yum-config-manager --add-repo=http://cbs.centos.org/repos/sclo7-rh-mariadb100-rh-testing/x86_64/

When we want to release them, the process is the following:

• tag builds into -release tag:

cbs add-pkg sclo7-rh-mariadb100-rh-release --owner=sclo rh-mariadb100-mariadb
cbs tag-build sclo7-rh-mariadb100-rh-release rh-mariadb100-mariadb-10.0.18-1.el7

• sign and release packages into http://mirror.centos.org (ticket to be send like https://bugs.centos.org/view.php?id=9838)

• announce release to https://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-announce/ (like https://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-announce/2015-December/021577.html)

  • we need to announce separately for CentOS 6 and CentOS 7
  • we must test properly that the steps mentioned in the announcement work

The collection naming breakdown

Software collection's name is cohesive identification that was chosen by author and is not supposed to be broke down to separate parts.

However, since the naming usually follows some guidelines, there is an example of sclo-vagrant1 software collection:

• <sclo> : The goal of prefix in the SCL name is *not* to scope or brand the software collection, rather it is to "namespace" it. Prefix "rh-" is used in case of Red Hat's collections available in Red Hat Software Collections product; or "sclo-" in case of collections created by the community.

A prefix in the collection name:
1) allows "others" (users in particular) to have a distinguishing name per their requirement
2) SCL authors have one "collection name" wherever the collection will appear
3) users (open source projects, paying, whatever) have one collection name to target irrelevant of platform
More on the prefix available at: https://www.redhat.com/archives/sclorg/2015-February/msg00022.html

• <vagrant> : This is the app which is being shipped as the primary component. A collection will often include many support components. Eg on the php collections, many php extensions and pear modules are also shipped in the same collection, under the same collection name.

• <1> : Denotes the major version and the level at which the abi will be tracked. Examples might include ruby197 ruby200 etc

Further information

• SoftwareCollections.org