Re: rpm support for 7.4 and beyond

On Wednesday 12 November 2003 08:57 am, Robert Treat wrote:
> I haven't seen any discussion on the topic, so thought I might start
> one. We currently provide rpms for Red Hat 7.x, 8.x, and 9, and I'm
> assuming that we'll have rpms for all of those for 7.4 once release time
> rolls around. However, given that Red Hat is dropping support for 7.x
> and 8.x version on Jan 1st, and Red Hat 9 next April, do the current rpm
> builders forsee any issues with providing rpms for those platforms in
> the future?

The biggest issue is going to be 'will it build' on those releases. The tcl
version deal (with tcl prior to 8.1) will prevent building on Red Hat 6.2
(which we have tried to support, to varying degrees). I am following the
Fedora Legacy project; they purpose to support as a cummunity those older RHL
releases.

My hands are somewhat tied at the present to only supporting what I actively
run. That is currently RHL 8.0 and Fedora Core 1. (not 1.0, incidentally;
there is no minor version). I am migrating to Fedora Core 1 across the
board, and will be migrating to FC 2 when it comes out (I need the 2.6
kernel's features). While I could easily install and build up a buildfarm
for the others, if I'm not actively using it bitrot is more likely to set in.
But as part of Fedora Legacy I may be doing this anyway. Depends on the
business case I can make for it at PARI.

Frankly, supporting the older stuff is a real pain, primarily because people
expect an rpm -Uvh to work in a sane manner, which it currently does not do.
That, BTW, is why there haven't been any RPMs of 7.4 yet: I plan on having a
migration strategy in place first, although if I can't get it working right
by final I may just provide the same sort of RPM as prior. The idea is to
have 7.2.4 and 7.3.[45] RPMs with the migration strategy built in
concurrently to the 7.4 RPMs -- this way, the user can update to the same
major version first, then _install_ (NOT upgrade) the 7.4 RPM on top. This
works with the linux kernel now; it shouldn't be too hard to make it work
with postgresql.

> Also (and maybe someone from Red Hat can weigh in here) are there any
> plans from Red Hat to release RHEL rpms for postgresql in the future,
> and/or plans to make sure the community rpm builders would have access
> to those platforms in order to build rpms against them?

The RHEL3 beta, taroon, had the rh-postgresql rpms, including the server
packages.

I am also intrigued by the community-driven rhel-rebuild and cAosity projects.
If those stay close to the 'official' thing from Red Hat, then a postgresql
rpm built there should run on real RHEL.

Having said that, I plan on budgeting for a copy of RHEL WS. I can build
there.

I have had pretty good results with my volunteer team thus far; I hope that
continues.

What I do want to ask for, though, is a little patience if the 7.4 release
happens with no RPMs concurrently released. I do my best; but I have a job
to do. That job is currently very busy.
--
Lamar Owen
Director of Information Technology
Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute
1 PARI Drive
Rosman, NC 28772
(828)862-5554
www.pari.edu