On 11/9/19 12:51 PM, Jóhann B. Guðmundsson wrote:
Hi
On 11/8/19 4:19 PM, Laura Abbott wrote:
Hi,
I'm looking to bring in another piece of downstream work into Fedora
sometime next week. The short summary is that Fedora will be bringing
in some files to build against a RHEL buildroot but Fedora will still
be the same.
If you change a board in a boat is it still the same boat?, If you change 10 boards in the boat is it still the same boat? 100 boards, thousands and in the when you have replaced it all?
This looks like some backward move should not downstream be adopting Fedora not the other way around?
What's the end game here in general and for the other components in the distribution. How long before we be entirely colonized by RHEL?
I can't speak for other components but at least for the kernel this work
is attempting to bridge the gap between RHEL and Fedora that's been
around for too long and keeps growing. The goal is to help both RHEL
and Fedora take fixes and feedback from each other.
In an ideal world, yes downstream would be adopting Fedora and
they do to a degree. The bigger issue is that changes happen in
downstream and then don't get back into Fedora or only get added
back as an afterthought. Some things we don't care about but some
are actual bug fixes or fixes we might want. A good example is
some downstream work for optimizing module compression in the
spec file. This would help Fedora as well but it never got submitted.
Even when RHEL does take what Fedora has done upstream,
there have been issues with integration. A good example here is
the split into kernel-core and kernel-modules. This worked fine
technically but when RHEL picked it up there were some unexpected
issues (documentation updates and I think a few scripts)
To try and bridge this gap, we're working to get a src-git tree
that works for both Fedora and RHEL. Even without the RHEL
component, using a src-git tree for most of our daily work
in Fedora would be a good thing. dist-git tends to trip up
people who want to build their own kernels, especially if they
are trying to build something non-trivial (e.g. an entire
graphics branch). src-git is what most work is done in anyway.
The RHEL kernel tree has been src-git based for a while so
aligning on that makes sense.
I realize my wording about "Fedora will still be the same"
was vague. None of this work should meaningfully impact the
kernel binaries generated by the Fedora build process. Kernel
configuration options are still the same, external modules should
still build. Parts of the build process may change and some
extra files will be packaged. So yes some things _will_ change
but it should be changes that are transparent to users or
have minimal impact. If these changes cause regressions or
are not acceptable for other reasons, I'm more than willing to
fix or revert. One of the changes I brought in (weak-updates)
caused a regression due to missing a fix in kmod. I reverted
it for now and will be bringing it back when things are built.
Part of "Fedora will still be the same" means that our current
policies are still in place. Fedora still has the freedom to make
changes how it wants. We can still turn on configuration options
and make build changes as we need. We're not getting RHEL process
(cheering from the background). What we'd like to change is to
be more thoughtful about what will happen for RHEL down the road.
This means that when Fedora sets configuration options and build
changes, we'll be reviewing what we want to happen for RHEL as
well. This doesn't mean RHEL gets to come in an dictate what
happens but like other community members, RHEL can say "I see
you are making change X. This impacts me in way Y. Can we
consider change Z instead to lessen my impact?". Sometimes the
answer is no, we're doing X and then RHEL gets to figure out how
to workaround this. We already see this happening with things like
configuration options (e.g. CONFIG_LIBNVDIMM
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1696481)
This freedom to make changes makes it easier for downstream as
well since we can say "well Fedora has had CONFIG_BLAH on for
months now and there have been no complaints".
Fedora has an incredibly valuable community and the goal here
is not to subvert it but make sure we can bring the benefits of
that community back to downstream in the kernel. I also look forward
to bringing more downstream kernel developers into Fedora so they can
continue making changes and fixes directly in Fedora.
Thanks,
Laura
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