On 22. 06. 20 21:36, Josh Boyer wrote:
I'd like to ask whether RHEL 9 has decided for default modular streams despite
their failure in Fedora, whether this decision is final and what was the
reasoning behind it.
That's an interesting question. I think for the purposes of this
discussion, we should acknowledge that usage of default module streams
in Fedora and usage in RHEL aren't equivalent. Therefore, failure of
adoption in Fedora doesn't necessarily equate to failure in RHEL.
With that context, I'll continue.
Before we continue with that context, could you please elaborate on this?
Obviously we can say "usage of default module streams in Fedora and RHEL is
different" and to some extent this will always be true. However I would like to
know why they are *significantly* different to justify saying the failure in
Fedora does not necessarily mean RHEL would experience the same failure.
What makes RHEL so different that the failure is not relevant to it? Is it the
stable nature of RHEL content? Is it the limited scope of RHEL content? Is it
the less "wild" development process? Is it something different?
I am not saying it isn't true, I am genuinely interested on the "whys" behind
your statement. Without them, I need to guess and it's obvious that once we
guess rationales of the words said by others, we cannot make proper informed
decisions or a reasonable discussion.
When discussing default modular streams in ELN, we have heard that ELN needs
default streams because RHEL 9 needs them. I would like to know if this
information is something that comes from RHEL leadership directly or whether it
is a personal option of the people who said such things.
Why does it matter if "RHEL leadership" said it, or if a RHEL package
maintainer said it? Politely, I find that an odd way to frame that
discussion, devalues individual team autonomy, and ignores what the
conversation points should be. Let me suggest a different way.
Every package maintainer's (Fedora and RHEL alike) opinion matters. However,
when making distro-wide decisions, it makes total sense to evaluate the
following two statements with different merit, would you not agree?
a) "Grinch doesn't like modularity, he doesn't want default modular streams in
Fedora."
b) "After months of evaluation, the engineering leadership of Fedora has
decided that default modular streams are not allowed in Fedora."
Similarly I'd like to know whether "we need default modular streams in ELN
because we need them in RHEL 9" is an opinion of a single person, single team,
whether it is an assumed opinion of the distro as a whole, or the documented
position of RHEL 9 leadership. Whatever the answer is, it doesn't make the
statement more or less valid, it merely helps us to better understand the scope.
Since the "because RHEL 9 needs it" argument has so far been the end point of
the rationale, and since you've been so kind to share some RHEL 9 plans wrt
modularity on Fedora devel list, I've decided to ask about this particular topic
here as well.
We have spend 3+ Fedora releases debating default modular streams in Fedora and
once we were about to prohibit them, a request has come from ELN to have them.
Hence, I've assumed there were some RHEL conversations and decisions about
whether to have default modular streams in RHEL 9 even when they are not allowed
in Fedora and the request to have them in ELN is the direct result of such
conversations and/or decisions. To understand the reasoning, I've asked
clarifying questions.
I am not trying to argue here, I am only asking for more insight. For me, the
request for default modular streams was surprising. Now I am trying to approach
the request with an open mind, but to do that, I would like to understand it better.
We know within RHEL we have teams that will likely continue using
default streams. We also know that some teams will not. Further we
know that somes teams will likely not use modules at all, just as
teams in RHEL 8 did not use modules. The flexibility to choose the
approach that makes the most sense for that team and their package set
would be what I would hope we try to enable in Fedora and ELN.
This is exactly the flexibility we've already had enabled in Fedora for 3+
releases and after a very long and very painful discussion Fedora has decided to
prohibit it. Hence, I don't understand what are the reasons to have it in RHEL 9
regardless, which is the reason I ask the questions.
It is
fair to ask why a team would want to continue using default streams,
and I can offer guesses but they would be only that. I would hope
such teams could freely chime in here. The point is, within RHEL it
is actually their choice to make, balancing the needs of their
customers with the content they are packaging, etc.
It remains unclear to me why Fedora would go out of its way to
disallow usage of default streams in ELN. I understand they can
present some issues if used incorrectly, or for something that is core
to non-modular content, but the concept of a default stream being
forbidden outright is strange. Default streams in ELN don't impact
the wider Fedora distribution and removing them eliminates options and
flexibility, forcing their usage to become a downstream-only concept
which is exactly what we're trying to avoid with ELN to begin with.
I haven't asked the questions to argue about this. I just wanted to get things
clarified, so we can have a discussion at FESCo based on some actual RHEL
information instead of guesses.
Frankly, I don't know how RHEL decisions are made or who makes them. As a Fedora
package maintainer (and hence by extension an ELN package maintainer) I just
want to know what decisions were made wrt default streams in RHEL 9 and why, so
I can understand the request for default streams in ELN better.
Thank you very much for sharing some RHEL information here.
--
Miro Hrončok
--
Phone: +420777974800
IRC: mhroncok
_______________________________________________
devel mailing list -- devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To unsubscribe send an email to devel-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/
List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
