Hi Jason,
In a nutshell, RHEL 7 is a rolling release. Point releases are basically
moments where several packages are updated at the same time, and these
updates usually bring bigger changes than standard RHEL updates.
RHEL 7.7 was released on August 6th, and support for RHEL 7.6 was
immediately dropped. This is almost transparent to RHEL users, since a
simple 'yum update' would automatically upgrade all packages to latest
RHEL 7.x release. Only (paying) RHEL customers, with an additional
support contract, can keep an old RHEL point release for some time.
CentOS does not offer such support contract, therefore as soon as a
point release is released, the previous one is immediately dropped.
Since CentOS is a recompilation of RHEL, there is a lag (~ several
months) between RHEL and CentOS releases. The "Continuous-Release" (CR)
repository is basically a beta version of the next CentOS point release,
which is based on an already-released RHEL point release. While the CR
release is not widely used (since it's a development version), it is a
very faithful representation on what the next official version would be,
since CentOS is only a mere recompilation of RHEL.
CentOS 7.7.1908 (based on RHEL 7.7) was released on the CR repo on
August 30th. Usually it stays there for several weeks, then it is
released with very minor changes. When it happens, the support of CentOS
7.6.1804 (based on RHEL 7.6) will be immediately dropped, and the update
to this version will be sent to all CentOS 7 machines.
For the "WireGuard support" perspective, right now it works on latest
"official" CentOS 7 kernel. I suspect that it doesn't compile on the
already-released RHEL 7.7, but I don't have a RHEL7 installation where I
can test it. However, when CentOS 7.7.1908 (based on RHEL 7.7) will be
released, which should happen in some weeks, it is highly probable that
WireGuard will not be compatible with the latest (and only supported)
RHEL/CentOS 7 kernel.
To answer to your question, I agree with you that it is worth only
supporting the most recent official RHEL/CentOS kernel, since the CR
release is meant only for testing. However, "be prepared" that, when
CentOS 7.7.1908 will be released, it is highly probable that WG will not
compile on it.
Dario
On 07/09/2019 00:47, Jason A. Donenfeld wrote:
Hey Dario,
I'm not super familiar with the RHEL release varieties. Maybe you or
somebody can clarify and help define how we'll approach it?
What we've done in the past is support whatever the "latest" RHEL
kernel is. IIRC, 7.6 was released not so long ago, and we did the
compat.h work on 7.6, and then dropped support for RHEL 7.5. It sounds
to me like what you're saying now is that 7.6 has already been
replaced by 7.7? Or there's a stable 7.6 and then an "in-development"
7.7 that is rolling? If it's the latter case, do you know if that's
widely used and worthwhile for us to support?
In other words, I'm not so sure of the RHEL landscape, but if you make
a description and argument for what we should support in WireGuard's
compat layer, as long as it's somewhat reasonable, I'm happy to
oblige.
Jason
_______________________________________________
WireGuard mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.zx2c4.com/mailman/listinfo/wireguard
