Re: Add AlmaLinux as Specifically Supported Distro

Greetings,

* Jonathan S. Katz (jkatz(at)postgresql(dot)org) wrote:
> On 1/4/22 1:22 PM, Devrim Gündüz wrote:
> >On Tue, 2022-01-04 at 13:16 -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
> >>I don't know the relative sizes of the user bases, but I think it
> >>would be fair to have the download page list only the distro(s)
> >>Devrim actually tests on, and then say something like "The RHEL
> >>packages should work on other binary-compatible RHEL clone distros,
> >>but we don't test that".
> >
> >+1 .
>
> So, I want to back this up a minute.
>
> There are two places where the language is being discussed.
>
> First, on "Downloads"[1], if you click "Linux", you'll see a few panes,
> including one that says "Red Hat / Rocky / CentOS". I believe those 3 are
> amongst those that Devrim explicitly tests the packages against. If there
> are more, they are encompassed underneath.

I find it interesting that clicking on that brings you to a page with
"Linux downloads (Red Hat family)" as the title. Why not make that be
what the link is, so that they are then consistent..? That is, change
"Red Hat / Rocky / CentOS" to "Red Hat family" on /download.

> At this point, I would be -1 changing anything on #1 unless it adds more
> clarity to how users download. I looked at the data YoY, and clicks to the
> RHEL download page are up ~100%, which seems to indicate to leave things as
> is for the moment.

> Then, there is the RHEL page[2] itself. It's divided into two sections:
>
> - PostgreSQL Yum Repository
> - Included in Distribution
>
> IMV, I think it's fair to include Alma Linux in the "included in
> distribution", though per Tom's point we may want to ensure we have at least
> one buildfarm animal hitting it. However, we should make it clear what
> distributions Devrim test against, and perhaps add that disclaimer to the
> bottom of that list.

Given the state of things and the proliferation of RHEL clones, we might
be better off stating more explicitly "this is what is tested" instead
of "this is what's supported." In the drop-down for platform, we would
then have something like "Red Hat Enterprise or Clone version 6/7/8/9".

Similar throughout the rest. Ideally, this would avoid us having to get
into these discussions in the future.

> Or, at the top of the page where we list out distributions, we can add that
> line below.
>
> Thoughts?

Only other thought I have is if we had any documentation around what the
exact testing that's done is and if we'd be willing to allow others the
opportunity to provide that testing, similar to what we do with the
buildfarm. Not saying that either is required but it might be a path to
allow us to have some website that's updated like the buildfarm is but
for the different platforms. I know we have the jenkins system for the
debs but that's not linked in anywhere and not sure if we'd want it to
be linked in directly vs. something that's cleaner and simpler that's
somehow automatically updated.

That last being just brain storming really, of course.

Thanks,

Stephen