CentOS - Jun 2020 - Blog article about the state of CentOS

Once upon a time, Noam Bernstein <noam.bernstein at nrl.navy.mil>
said:
> Of course.   My only question is whether the observation that the gap for
CentOS 8 is indeed larger than we have come to be used to for CentOS 7.
So, I took a look... and the answer is "it's not" (with a small
sample
set).  I took dates from Wikipedia for RHEL and the archived release
notes for CentOS.  I didn't bother with the .0 releases (since that's a
lot of new work anyway).  Right now, CentOS 8 is far faster than CentOS
7 and 6 were at this stage.

release RHEL date       CentOS date     days
6.1     2011-05-19      2011-12-12      207
6.2     2011-12-06      2012-07-24      231
6.3     2012-05-20      2012-09-30      133
6.4     2013-02-21      2013-05-21      89
6.5     2013-11-21      2014-02-26      97
6.6     2014-10-13      2014-11-15      33
6.7     2015-07-22      2015-09-05      45
6.8     2016-05-10      2016-07-28      79
6.9     2017-03-21      2017-04-05      15
6.10    2018-06-19      2018-07-03      14

7.1     2015-03-05      2015-10-11      220
7.2     2015-11-19      2016-02-19      92
7.3     2016-11-03      2016-12-21      48
7.4     2017-08-01      2018-03-21      232
7.5     2018-04-10      2018-10-30      203
7.6     2018-10-30      2019-01-28      90
7.7     2019-08-06      (didn't find release notes)
7.8     2020-03-31      2020-04-27      27

8.1     2019-11-05      2020-01-15      71
8.2     2020-04-28      2020-06-15      48

-- 
Chris Adams <linux at cmadams.net>

On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 1:53 PM Chris Adams <linux at cmadams.net> wrote:
> Once upon a time, Noam Bernstein <noam.bernstein at nrl.navy.mil>
said:
> > Of course.   My only question is whether the observation that the gap
> for CentOS 8 is indeed larger than we have come to be used to for CentOS 7.
>
> So, I took a look... and the answer is "it's not" (with a
small sample
> set).  I took dates from Wikipedia for RHEL and the archived release
> notes for CentOS.  I didn't bother with the .0 releases (since
that's a
> lot of new work anyway).  Right now, CentOS 8 is far faster than CentOS
> 7 and 6 were at this stage.
>
> release RHEL date       CentOS date     days
> 6.1     2011-05-19      2011-12-12      207
> 6.2     2011-12-06      2012-07-24      231
> 6.3     2012-05-20      2012-09-30      133
> 6.4     2013-02-21      2013-05-21      89
> 6.5     2013-11-21      2014-02-26      97
> 6.6     2014-10-13      2014-11-15      33
> 6.7     2015-07-22      2015-09-05      45
> 6.8     2016-05-10      2016-07-28      79
> 6.9     2017-03-21      2017-04-05      15
> 6.10    2018-06-19      2018-07-03      14
>
> 7.1     2015-03-05      2015-10-11      220
> 7.2     2015-11-19      2016-02-19      92
> 7.3     2016-11-03      2016-12-21      48
> 7.4     2017-08-01      2018-03-21      232
> 7.5     2018-04-10      2018-10-30      203
> 7.6     2018-10-30      2019-01-28      90
> 7.7     2019-08-06      (didn't find release notes)
> 7.8     2020-03-31      2020-04-27      27
>
> 8.1     2019-11-05      2020-01-15      71
> 8.2     2020-04-28      2020-06-15      48
>
 7.7     2019-08-06      2019-09-17      42

> On Jun 17, 2020, at 4:53 PM, Chris Adams <linux at cmadams.net>
wrote:
> 
> Once upon a time, Noam Bernstein <noam.bernstein at nrl.navy.mil>
said:
>> Of course.   My only question is whether the observation that the gap
for CentOS 8 is indeed larger than we have come to be used to for CentOS 7.
> 
> So, I took a look... and the answer is "it's not" (with a
small sample
> set).  I took dates from Wikipedia for RHEL and the archived release
> notes for CentOS.  I didn't bother with the .0 releases (since
that's a
> lot of new work anyway).  Right now, CentOS 8 is far faster than CentOS
> 7 and 6 were at this stage.
Did you look at the German blog that started this discussion? I don't know
what determines the archived release notes dates, but I just picked the longest
delay, CentOS 7.4.   You list:
> 
> release RHEL date       CentOS date     days
> 7.4     2017-08-01      2018-03-21      232
which is indeed the "last updated" dated on the archived notes.
However, the German blog post that started this thread lists the much earlier
2017-09-13 for CentOS, 43 days.  On the mailing list this message
https://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-announce/2017-September/022532.html
<https://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-announce/2017-September/022532.html>appears
to confirm the earlier date.

I'm not sure the difference shown in that blog (assuming the other dates are
also correct) is really quite so dramatic as to justify the conclusion that
CentOS 8 is now too slow in getting updates for a substantial number of
situations where the CentOS 7 lag was acceptable, but it's apparently not
faster.

								Noam

On 6/17/20 3:53 PM, Chris Adams wrote:
> Once upon a time, Noam Bernstein <noam.bernstein at nrl.navy.mil>
said:
>> Of course.   My only question is whether the observation that the gap
for CentOS 8 is indeed larger than we have come to be used to for CentOS 7.
> 
> So, I took a look... and the answer is "it's not" (with a
small sample
> set).  I took dates from Wikipedia for RHEL and the archived release
> notes for CentOS.  I didn't bother with the .0 releases (since
that's a
> lot of new work anyway).  Right now, CentOS 8 is far faster than CentOS
> 7 and 6 were at this stage.
> 
> release RHEL date       CentOS date     days
> 6.1     2011-05-19      2011-12-12      207
> 6.2     2011-12-06      2012-07-24      231
> 6.3     2012-05-20      2012-09-30      133
> 6.4     2013-02-21      2013-05-21      89
> 6.5     2013-11-21      2014-02-26      97
> 6.6     2014-10-13      2014-11-15      33
> 6.7     2015-07-22      2015-09-05      45
> 6.8     2016-05-10      2016-07-28      79
> 6.9     2017-03-21      2017-04-05      15
> 6.10    2018-06-19      2018-07-03      14
> 
> 7.1     2015-03-05      2015-10-11      220
> 7.2     2015-11-19      2016-02-19      92
> 7.3     2016-11-03      2016-12-21      48
> 7.4     2017-08-01      2018-03-21      232
> 7.5     2018-04-10      2018-10-30      203
> 7.6     2018-10-30      2019-01-28      90
> 7.7     2019-08-06      (didn't find release notes)
> 7.8     2020-03-31      2020-04-27      27
> 
> 8.1     2019-11-05      2020-01-15      71
> 8.2     2020-04-28      2020-06-15      48
> 
Your dates are significantly off
Wikipedia has a delay listed in a table:

It is, for CentOS-7, For example:

7.0  27
7.1  26
7.2  25
7.3  39
7.4  43
7.5  31
7.6  34
7.7  42
7.8  28


For 6 .. since 6.2, it has bee3n between 10 and 18 days.

For 8:

8.0  140
8.1  71
8.2  48

And EL8 is exponentially harder with an entirely new build system and
the requirement to build modules.

On 20/06/20 3:50 am, Johnny Hughes wrote:
> Your dates are significantly off
> Wikipedia has a delay listed in a table:
> 
> It is, for CentOS-7, For example:
> 
> 7.0  27
> 7.1  26
> 7.2  25
> 7.3  39
> 7.4  43
> 7.5  31
> 7.6  34
> 7.7  42
> 7.8  28
> 
> 
> For 6 .. since 6.2, it has bee3n between 10 and 18 days.
> 
> For 8:
> 
> 8.0  140
> 8.1  71
> 8.2  48
So the delays for 8 are significantly longer than they ever were for 7.
> And EL8 is exponentially harder with an entirely new build system and
> the requirement to build modules.
But it seems like every major release has had reasons to be 
exponentially harder than the last.  With 7 it was the shift to using 
the git sources instead of the SRPMS that were previously provided by 
Red Hat, thereby necessitating an entirely new build system, plus the 
change to systemd and the introduction of a new point release numbering 
scheme, not to mention the move to entirely new infrastructure because 
of the change to Red Hat sponsorship.  So given those I find it hard to 
believe that the changes in 8 are so much different as to have had such 
longer delays than 7.

I'd also like to point out something else, from:
https://wiki.centos.org/About/Building_8.x#Current_Timeline_8.2.2004

It would appear that the package build was completed on the 4th of May, 
why didn't we get a CR repo dump this time around so that CentOS users 
wouldn't have to wait another month before getting critical updates?


Peter