Fedora Ring 0 definition

[Matthew Miller]

On Wed, Sep 02, 2015 at 11:59:55AM -0700, Brendan Conoboy wrote:
> Re-sending this with a better title so people might read it ;-)

Yes, thanks -- I admit to having skimmed over it in my mail-catchup
attempt.

> >especially how the rings interact.  As a side note, everyone agreed
> >the word "rings" breaks down the further you get away from the center,
> >but nobody has come up with something better yet (Venns? Blobs?
> >Zones?).

If people aren't gonna want to rename Rawhide to Bikeshed, then maybe
*this* could be called that. :)

> >Right now the Fedora distribution is 1 ring, let's call it ring 1. The
> >distribution contains an operating system and numerous applications
> >that run on that operating system.  When we talk about defining ring 0
> >we're really talking about distinguishing between the operating system
> >and the applications that run on top of it.

Speaking of bikesheds... we've traditionally defined the Fedora
operating system as *the whole thing*, so now calling a subset of that
the OS gives plenty of room for quibbling. I'm hoping to forestall that
by saying that regardless of that, we all know what you mean here. That
may be optimistic.


> >We want to go from this:
> >Ring 1: The Fedora Distribution
> >To this:
> >
> >The Fedora Distribution:
> >Ring 0: The Linux Operating System
> >Ring 1: The Applications and Stacks
> >
> >It seems quite modest, but working through the details on what this
> >means is hard.  What is an operating system in the Linux context? Ring
> >0 will likely have the strictest set of policies of all the rings, so
> >we want to keep it as small as possible, but it is more than a minimal
> >install.  These are the traits of rings in general and ring 0 in
> >particular as I see it:
> >
> >1. Ring 0 is a repository of rpm packages built in koji.
> >
> >2. Ring 0 contains, but is not limited to, the minimal install of
> >packages to go from Power On to a login prompt.

In my conception, the "is limited to" set was Ring 0, and the thing you
are calling Ring 0 was Ring 1, and then Envs and Stacks was Ring 2. I
can live with ajusting things; just noting. For the rest of this
message I will use your levels.

> >3. Ring 0 passes repoclosure on its own (Packages listed as hard
> >"Requires" in a ring 0 spec file are themselves are implicitly ring 0).

*nod*

> >4. Ring 0 is not self hosting.  Packages listed in "BuildRequires" do
> >not need to be members of Ring 1.  This isn't ideal, but it's a
> >practical consideration.

When you say Ring 1 here, you mean Ring 0, right?


> >5. Ring membership is at the source package level, not the binary
> >package.  If one source package's binary/noarch sub-package is in ring
> >0, all sub-packages are in ring 0.

Hmmmm. Are we sure about that? That means that one can't, for example,
subpackage an optional feature with huge dependencies (or cascading
explosion of dependencies) to keep them from being pulled into Ring 0.

If this is the case, are we open to having *separate* Ring 1 packages
built from the same source but with different options?


> >6. Ring 0 contains the minimal libraries that define the OS API/ABI,
> >such as glibc.  This probably happens implicitly by #3, repoclosure.
> >
> >7. Ring 0 contains the tools needed to update existing packages and
> >install new packages.

At the DNF level or at the Yum level?



-- 
Matthew Miller
<mattdm at fedoraproject.org>
Fedora Project Leader