AlmaLinux Wiki

# ALESCo Meeting Minutes (2024-07-24)

Minutes recorded by Cody Robertson.

Edited by Cody Robertson and Jonathan Wright for publishing.

# Members

# Attendance

  • Jonathan Wright
  • Cody Robertson
  • Andrew Lukoshko
  • Elkhan Mammadli
  • Ben Thomas
  • Neal Gompa

# Community Attendees

  • Michel Lind

# Decisions Adopted

  1. AlmaLinux 10's default x86_64 microarchitecture build will be v3, following RHEL. Approved building and maintaining x86_64_v2 as a separate architecture for AlmaLinux 10.
    • Unanimous decision.
  2. AlmaLinux 10 will have frame pointers enabled, diverging from RHEL 10 which will not have frame pointers.
    • Unanimous decision
  3. AlmaLinux will publish a rolling-style distro build, serving as a continuous beta release, starting with AlmaLinux 10.
    • Unanimous decision

# Minutes

  • ALESCo Logistics
    • Items:
      • Meeting times
      • Recording
      • Meeting chat (public?, live?)
      • Where to publish: minutes, recordings (GitHub repository, wiki, etc)
      • Issue tracker (GH repo?)
      • Policy/procedure documentation
    • Will be discussing further via chat channels
  • RHEL moving to x86_64 v3 microarchitecture in version 10
    • Some older hardware becomes unsupported
    • Improved performance
    • Community has voiced concerns with RHEL's decision on social media
      • CERN and other labs have voiced concerns
    • AlmaLinux will build a maintain a separate x86_64_v2 release. v3 will be the default.
    • Package naming is TBD. RHEL is using x86_64 for v3 which is incorrect, they should use x86_64_v3
      • Will have discussions with them at FLOCK about this
        • We'd like to follow RHEL's direction as our upstream, so we hope to talk with them about using the architecture tagging properly.
      • AlmaLinux v2 builds will use x86_64_v2 tags
        • Andrew & team working on patching various applications in the RPM stack to support this within AlmaLinux
          • Can potentially PR this work upstream to help convince RHEL to use the proper _v3 naming within RHEL 10
    • Enable frame pointers in AlmaLinux 10 builds
      • Most competing distros are enabling them now
      • Negligible performance impact
        • Loss of a register affects x86 32bit, legacy hardware take a noticeable hit
      • Allows continuous real-time profiling for "cheap"
      • Fedora enabled them several versions ago with no complaints after enablement
      • Especially useful in HPC
      • CentOS Hyperscale SIG considering enabling it by default
      • Do we offer non-frame pointer builds
    • Rolling release build for AlmaLinux 10
      • Serves as continous beta release
      • Will run full composes at least twice-yearly
      • Package updates will be a constant flow
      • Separate mirror source/repo on infra side
      • We're doing this already for AlmaLinux 10 development, just not currently publishing the resulting builds in a repoitory/as an OS
      • Not a replacement for point releases
      • We have to be mindful of security releases/patches from upstream
      • OpenQA to test all of the builds
      • Build in-line with point release (ex, frame pointers enabled)