We need specific packages and recent python3.7+ which by default are not bundled in CentOS 7 or CentOS 8. For that I’ve created few months ago three COPR repositories:
in order to help in having working CentOS 7 and 8 templates. Injecting so much packages in our build infrastructure is not feasible in terms of human resources (e.g. see WIP topic https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-builder/pull/123). Using COPR repositories is acceptable for community templates because all remain in Fedora build infrastructure and it’s Fedora who provides the repositories.
Focusing on the case of CentOS 7, it’s not compatible with latest components based on python3.7+ like app-pdf-converter and I’m not going to (and I don’t specifically want to) redo what I’ve done for creating a python38 repository. I can try to fix as I can packages but for Qubes 4.1 I would love to drop it. For example, currently I’ve not built it at all for this release, even not partially.
Why? First, spec file are common to all RPM distro so it means to add several bunch of if conditions depending on the distro and also depending on the version. Second, CentOS 7 is reaching end of full updates by end of 2020. Only maintenance updates will remain (https://wiki.centos.org/About/Product). So my question is:
how many people is using CentOS 7 and cannot use CentOS 8 for the upcoming Qubes 4.1 release?
As you may know, I’m in charge of maintaining multiple templates Fedora, CentOS, Gentoo or even a little bit Debian more recently with DNF and reproducible builds tasks so I need to schedule and optimize the time allocated on those tasks in order to accomplish other Qubes topics.
Hi @fepitre. Is this a question for the community? If so I think it may be a good idea to do a poll. (click the on the right corner of the editor > Build poll)
@deeplow thank you for the tip. Yesterday I was briefly looking for that but I’ve switched to other stuff. Don’t hesitate to give me feedback/reasons on the case where you would not be able to switch to CentOS 8.
I did select that I would be using CentOS 8, but want to amplify that this is not something that I personally rely on.
I run most of the rpm-based stuff in Fedora AppVMs.
If I need to run something, that is specifically written for an Enterprise Linux distribution and it refractorily does not work with Fedora, I will try it with the CentOS Template. But that becoming necessary is very rarely the case.
Again personally I prefer Fedora anyways: Doing some little changes every once in a while is better for me than pain-in-the-ass adaptations every larger while.
If there would be too much effort attached to maintaining those templates, I am totally fine with Fedora.
Now it’s pretty stable and fine with CentOS 8. After a brief chat with Marek on the subject, we are going to use only latest release of each distro on R4.1 but other releases should still be buildable.
Yes, unfortunately polls can only be edited in the first 5 minutes.
Another way to get more visibility might be opening up a new thread named “Are you using CentOS?” and just with that question and the poll. (then you can refer to this thread for the explanation).
Hi all.
Just to say that centos 7 EOL is in 2024.
Anyway, if I can suggest, at least is needed a note in template page if centos 7 isn’t going to be supported anymore.
Ah, another thing: Rocky Linux ?
Do You think it’s a possible substitute?
Thanks a lot,
M.
Recently while hacking on the community documentation, I thought that while we already have templates for CentOS 7 and 8, we don’t have any for Enterprise Linux 9.
While CentOS is now a rolling project, there are several vendors that produce what would be called ‘a stable CentOS 9’.
I’d be happy to help but I’m not a developer and understanding the available resources has proven too tough for me.
Please let me know, if you’d be interested in building such a template or in writing me an instruction in radically simple terms, how to build all the required Qubes/Xen components for such a system.
This is in the pipe because new Qubes builder is almost done so I think I could start looking at it to see if it works out of the box. Probably is in the next weeks and probably not until December.
on the right corner of the editor > Build poll)
but I think I cannot edit anymore.