Add documentation on support lifecycle #232

dhollinger · 2020-12-09T21:55:34Z

No description provided.

binford2k · 2020-12-09T22:01:04Z

Should this link to https://endoflife.software/operating-systems?

_docs/software_support_lifecycle.md

alexjfisher · 2020-12-10T20:19:16Z

_docs/software_support_lifecycle.md

+| ------- | -------------- | ----------- | --------------- | -------------- | --------------- |
+| CentOS/RHEL 6 | July 10th, 2011 | Nov 30th, 2020 | N/A | Nov 30th, 2020 | Nov 30th, 2021 |
+| CentOS/RHEL 7 | July 7th, 2014 | June 30th, 2024 | Mar 31st, 2024 | June 30th, 2024 | June 30th, 2025 |
+| CentOS/RHEL 8 | Sept 24th, 2019 | Dec 31, 2021 | Sept 30th, 2021 | Dec 31, 2021 | Dec 31, 2022 |


RHEL 8 of course won't be EOL next year.

I think it's a 'wait and see' for now as to how we test RHEL 8 when CentOS 8 disappears. Maybe we just have to use CentOS 8.3 images even when RHEL is on eg 8.8???

According to CentOS' FAQ, we need to be testing for RHEL on RHEL images going forward 🤷

@ekohl mentioned that there seems to be some confusion around this though.

For those unaware, I have sent an email about this with the PMC on CC. There is nothing secret in the initial email. To set the expectations right, I think the people responsible for that alias are currently busy but they are working on a solution exactly for the problem we're having: CI to test integration for community projects. While I work for Red Hat, this is not an area I work on and can only advocate for it. Luckily, our use case is not special in any way (loads of projects can/should do CI like we do) and one that was explicitly mentioned to be a focus point.

A Red Hat Developer subscription for the Vox Pupuli organization would almost work, if not for the "single-user" limitations. https://developers.redhat.com/articles/faqs-no-cost-red-hat-enterprise-linux

I have been told they want to fix this. Since it's a license, legal is involved. That means we need to be patient. The holiday season probably doesn't help either.

alexjfisher · 2020-12-10T20:20:40Z

_docs/software_support_lifecycle.md

+| CentOS/RHEL 6 | July 10th, 2011 | Nov 30th, 2020 | N/A | Nov 30th, 2020 | Nov 30th, 2021 |
+| CentOS/RHEL 7 | July 7th, 2014 | June 30th, 2024 | Mar 31st, 2024 | June 30th, 2024 | June 30th, 2025 |
+| CentOS/RHEL 8 | Sept 24th, 2019 | Dec 31, 2021 | Sept 30th, 2021 | Dec 31, 2021 | Dec 31, 2022 |
+| CentOS Stream | Jan 1st, 2022 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |


I think there is an EOL date as there will be a CentOS 8 Stream and later a CentOS 9 Stream.

I believe the CentOS itself only supports the mainline CentOS Stream. CentOS Stream 8 and Stream 9 are for RHEL Dev purposes.

Each major release will have a branch, similar to how CentOS Linux is currently structured; however, CentOS Stream is designed to focus on RHEL development, so only the latest Stream will have the marketing focus of the CentOS Project.

https://centos.org/distro-faq/

It is my understanding that while RHEL 8 is its full support cycle, there will be a CentOS 8 stream. During RHEL's full support cycle, new features and hardware enablement are being implemented and those should first land in CentOS 8 stream. It is exactly the purpose of stream to allow anyone a preview of that. The goal here is Continuous Delivery, similar to how modern development should have an always production ready git master branch. There should be CI to cover this, but of course there will be bugs and regressions since it's still software.

After the full support cycle ends, it enters Maintenance Support. In this phase, RHEL should only receive security features and urgent bug fixes. As such, there's a lot less need for integration testing for upcoming releases (essentially what stream allows).

There is a period (roughly 2 years) where development of RHEL 8 and 9 overlap. During this period there should be 2 streams in parallel, but I think marketing focus implies they'll direct users to CentOS Stream 9 rather than 8.

This is based on https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/errata/

_docs/software_support_lifecycle.md

igalic

🙋🏻️

_docs/software_support_lifecycle.md

bastelfreak · 2020-12-16T11:38:14Z

_docs/software_support_lifecycle.md

+### Support Lifecycle
+
+#### Operating Systems
+An Operating System is no longer considered supported once it reaches an End of Life date determined by the upstream maintainer* of the operating system. To ensure our users have enough time to adjust, we will take the following steps to ensure as seamless of a transition as possible:


there are some edge cases. for example debian has still "support" for debian 8, but that's very very limited. In the past we considered that as not-supported. Same applies for RedHat 5/6 where you can only get support if you buy it from redhat. I also consider those distros as not supported anymore

I think we do need to decide ahead of time which versions we will support.

For Debian, do we want to support until EOL or until End of LTS. This one is confusing as other LTS operating systems, like RHEL and Ubuntu, have EOL and end of LTS as the same thing and post LTS support as "Extended Support".

I think for RHEL, I'd like to end our support on the EOL date, not the End of Extended support. That only affects paying RHEL customers and we aren't in the "business" of supporting Enterprises. We build for any user and as such our focus needs to be on what's best for the community as a whole, not the Enterprise users only.

_docs/software_support_lifecycle.md

tmannerm · 2020-12-27T13:12:29Z

_docs/software_support_lifecycle.md

+| CentOS/RHEL 7 | 2014/07/07 | 2024/06/30 | 2024/03/31 | 2024/06/30 | 2025/06/30 |
+| CentOS 8 | 2019/09/24 | 2021/12/31 | 2021/09/30 | 2021/12/31 | 2022/12/31 |
+| RHEL 8 |  2019/05/01 | 2029/05/31 | 2029/02/28 | 2029/05/31 | 2030/05/31 |
+| CentOS Stream 8 | 2022/01/01 | 2029/05/31 | 2029/02/28 | 2029/05/31 | 2030/05/31 |


CentOS Stream 8 upstream EOL is in May 31, 2024 according to https://centos.org/distro-faq/#q2-what-about-the-other-releases-of-centos-linux that states it's supported until "full RHEL support phase" which is defined in https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/errata/#Life_Cycle_Dates and specifically doesn't include the 5 year Maintenance Phase RHEL itself gets. There will be CentOS Stream 9 with 2 year overlap released before that according to Question 6 of the FAQ, though.

ekohl · 2021-01-08T15:10:09Z

So how do we break the stalemate here? It appears some people are in favor of keeping dead code while others (myself included) are against. Would a vote help?

binford2k · 2021-02-23T23:36:52Z

Let's commence a vote then!

👍 Keep dead code until one of the listed milestones is reached
👎 Kill dead code immediately and require users to pin to old versions at their own peril

ekohl · 2021-02-28T23:43:39Z

The votes look fairly conclusive to me but let's give this an explicit deadline. Is next week (March 8th) ok for everyone?

ekohl · 2021-03-08T15:15:21Z

Today is the 8th. I don't think the votes changed and we can conclude that with 9 votes Kill dead code immediately and require users to pin to old versions at their own peril won. There were 2 votes for Keep dead code until one of the listed milestones is reached. It should be noted that @binford2k voted for both, likely so both buttons showed up.

Thanks everyone who voted.

@dhollinger can you update the PR or anyone else wants to take a stab?

binford2k · 2021-03-08T16:01:20Z

@ekohl yes, that was my intention.

dhollinger · 2021-03-08T21:26:55Z

I will take a look shortly and update the PR accordingly

_docs/software_support_lifecycle.md

ekohl · 2021-03-09T10:05:38Z

_docs/software_support_lifecycle.md

+If a user still needs to use the EOL operating system, then they must either:
+* Pin their module version to a version compatible with their operating system.
+* Fork the module and maintain it internally.


I would still argue that if you are a maintainer of a module within Voxpupuli there should be the possibility to maintain support within the official releases. This does require automated test coverage IMHO. This can be a nice incentive to become a member of Voxpupuli and maintain a module.

yeah. I think as long as the person is willing to maintain support and it's tested and it doesn't block further development it's fine. but that's also an edge case.

Should modules with extended support policies have a clearly marked exception to the standard case?

_docs/software_support_lifecycle.md

Co-authored-by: Ewoud Kohl van Wijngaarden <[email protected]>

bastelfreak · 2021-06-12T16:25:48Z

I will merge this now as-is. In my opinion it reflects the current state of the discussion. The PR has quite a history of comments and more comments make it even harder to read. If anything doesn't agree with the post please raise an issue or open a PR to fix it.

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alexjfisher mentioned this pull request Dec 15, 2020

Drop sysinit /CentOS 6 support voxpupuli/puppet-redis#382

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rudexi mentioned this pull request Dec 17, 2020

Support for the praefect option voxpupuli/puppet-gitlab#372

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This was referenced Jan 6, 2021

Puppet 5 deprecation #229

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CentOS 6 deprecation #230

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dhollinger force-pushed the os_support_lc branch from 0e23996 to 333f894 Compare March 8, 2021 22:41

dhollinger marked this pull request as ready for review March 8, 2021 22:42

ekohl reviewed Mar 9, 2021

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attachmentgenie mentioned this pull request Mar 13, 2021

ubuntu 16.04 is nearing EOL #235

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dhollinger and others added 5 commits June 11, 2021 19:11

Add documentation on support lifecycle

e4b05ab

Fix some grammar and add footnote about maintainers

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Update the document with several requested fixes

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Update _docs/software_support_lifecycle.md

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Co-authored-by: Ewoud Kohl van Wijngaarden <[email protected]>

update the lifecycle document

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bastelfreak force-pushed the os_support_lc branch from ad2896d to 70c8d85 Compare June 11, 2021 17:19

fix broken link

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kenyon approved these changes Jun 12, 2021

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bastelfreak merged commit b79a440 into voxpupuli:master Jun 12, 2021

bastelfreak mentioned this pull request Jun 12, 2021

Don't require breaking releases for legacy OS #215

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Add documentation on support lifecycle #232

Add documentation on support lifecycle #232

dhollinger commented Dec 9, 2020

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bastelfreak commented Jun 12, 2021

Add documentation on support lifecycle #232

Add documentation on support lifecycle #232

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dhollinger commented Dec 9, 2020

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ekohl commented Jan 8, 2021

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bastelfreak commented Jun 12, 2021