On Feb 24, 2011, at 8:37 PM, Johnny Hughes <johnny@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 02/24/2011 05:43 PM, Ross Walker wrote:
>> On Feb 24, 2011, at 9:31 AM, Johnny Hughes <johnny@xxxxxxxxxx
>> <mailto:johnny@xxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
>>
>>> I am not saying this to be a smart a$$ or be negative ... just saying
>>> that other enterprise distributions exist that provide long term
>>> stability without backports ... Unbuntu LTS is a free example. They
>>> also provide integration of all their system libraries and audit their
>>> software for security compliance.
>>
>> I think the primary driving factor for Redhat to employ the backport
>> method is to maintain a stable ABI across a release, and the primary
>> reason for that is for third party application support.
>>
>> Redhat wants to provide a platform for which commercial vendors can
>> develop their wares such that they can say it supports RHEL 5 or 6 and
>> it will actually run on said platform without loss of functionality or
>> stability.
>>
>> I doubt the same can be said about Ubuntu LTS or even SLES where a
>> change in a library can result in either the third party application not
>> working or working with limited functionality.
>
> That is absolutely true and I agree with you 100% ... I like the
> constant ABI across the release and the backport model, otherwise I
> would be building "something else".
>
> But I also know that there are people who think backporting is the "Devil".
>
> I was only trying to provide sane advise for those people ... I think it
> is much safer (and more stable) to use unbuntu than to try and build
> your own latest bind and your own latest ssh and your own latest apache
> and your own latest php and "other stuff" and then bolt that into CentOS.
>
> If you start breaking the constant ABI and introducing lots of new
> shared libs, etc, then you are totally negating the only 2 things (ABI
> and stability) that makes CentOS an enterprise OS. You are even likely
> better off using Fedora than trying to replace massive parts of CentOS
> with newer stuff.
>
> Now ... I have done some custom things myself (like roll in Samba 3.4.x
> for Windows 7 PDC support into c4 and c5 and CentOS 5 LDAP in CentOS 4
> so I could add new C5 machines as Domain controllers in new offices with
> some older C4 machines as domain controllers in the old offices without
> having to replace the older OSes).
>
> So, with limited changes, it is possible.
I was pretty sure you understood, it was more for the audience.
Also to add, there is nothing wrong with adding custom builds of software, just make sure it goes in '/usr/local' for 'make install' builds and their updated libraries if they need updated libraries. If one is doing custom RPM builds it is still better to locate in '/usr/local' if possible, otherwise make damn sure it doesn't conflict with the base CentOS RPMs or one may find his/her self in dependency hell.
-Ross
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