[ale] CentOS repositories question

[DJ-Pfulio]

>> people.  That was 1 current version per OS and perhaps 40 customizations 1-2 for
>> each client.
> 
> I thought doing packaging only for LTS releases was the only way a small vendor
> could offer support. Test code and new features go in the 6-9 month release OS
> platforms.

I've had discussions with clients where we'd say - "we've never tried it - any
support calls will be time + materials."  Usually the people running/using the
software, didn't have any budget control, so they wouldn't try it.

> So a single release of your product for RHEL 6 will also support centos 6 and
> SuSE 10 and a repackaging/recompile/relink will work for Ubuntu 12 and Debian
> wheezy (?). New features are for new customers on new platforms.

I never assume Ubuntu and Debian to be 100% compatible. Ubuntu has recently been
shipping non-stable kernel releases in their LTS releases - 3.13, 3.19, ...

> So you have an interim release for centos 6.5 that adds new features. Existing
> customers can upgrade to the new version based on $$$ :-) unless you're just
> giving it away and only selling support.

Releasing anything is a big deal. We'd contract technical writers for a few
weeks and the test team would be slammed for months even with the automated
testing tools. Every platform is a tiny bit different and bugs show up that just
don't make any sense - often because 3rd party tools aren't 100% consistent
either. Even with all this, releases would be staggered by which client was most
needy (largest contract).  It usually wasn't an issue, since we only had about
40 clients world-wide for that software.

> Look at setting up a koji system to support builds across all rpm platforms. I
> assume debian and ubuntu have something similar.

We had automated builds 25 yrs ago, if that is what you are saying.