Re: [PATCH v2 04/13] tests: Update our CI to use CentOS Stream 9 instead of 8

[Thomas Huth]

On 17/04/2024 18.15, Daniel P. Berrangé wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 12, 2024 at 03:24:06PM +0200, Thomas Huth wrote:
> > RHEL 9 (and thus also the derivatives) are available since two years
> > now, so according to QEMU's support policy, we can drop the active
> > support for the previous major version 8 now.
> > Thus upgrade our CentOS Stream container to major version 9 now.
>
> The second reason for doing this is that Centos Stream 8
> will go EOL in about 1 month:
>
> https://blog.centos.org/2023/04/end-dates-are-coming-for-centos-stream-8-and-centos-linux-7/
>
>    "After May 31, 2024, CentOS Stream 8 will be archived
>     and no further updates will be provided."
>
> I'm seeking confirmation, but I suspect after that date we
> will be unable to build centos8 containers, as the package
> repos will likely be archived.
>
> RHEL-8 and other derivatives (Alma Linux, Rocky Linux,
> etc) remain actively supported by their respective vendors
> / communities. Only CentOS Stream EOLs.
>
>
> This has implications for our CI on stable branches. It is
> valid for our stable branches to continue targetting the
> RHEL-8 family of distros, as a 2 year cutoff in our support
> policy is evaluated at time of each given major release.
>
> IOW, cherry-picking this change to switch to CentOS Stream
> 9 is possibly inappropriate for stable branches.
>
> lcitool supports Alma Linux as target, so we could switch
> stable branches to Alma Linux 8 if desired to keep CI
> coverage of RHEL-8 family.
>
> Thoughts ?

Either use AlmaLinux for the stable branches, or drop the EL 8 testing in 
the stable CI completely ... I assume that the probability will be rather 
low that we break something there by backporting some few patches (and if 
so, people can still complain by opening a bug ticket, then we can fix it in 
the following stable release).

 Thomas