Add RPM packages for CentOS 7 to the release

[alexvanboxel]

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[istio-testing]

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[alexvanboxel]

For whoever reviews this, we need the CentOS 7 RPM's, once approved how can this be backported to the 1.10 and 1.11 branch?

[howardjohn]

I think this needs broader discussion on if the project will official support another platform, which has a testing, maintenance, etc cost.

[alexvanboxel]

The binaries are already built, we've extracted them from a docker file now. Enterprises are not switching to CentOS 8 as it doesn't offer the long-term support that CentOS 7 delivers. Another reason why it should be supported is that the main reason to join the VM to a mesh is to gradually decompose a legacy system into microservices. If Istio is not going to support the last LTS type in the CentOS line why support VM's at all?

[alexvanboxel]

It was one of the 1.10 milestones: https://github.com/istio/istio/milestone/24

[alexvanboxel]

I think this needs broader discussion on if the project will official support another platform, which has a testing, maintenance, etc cost.

How can we start this broader discussion? What's the right forum?

[linsun]

@istio/wg-test-and-release-maintainers team, can you suggest how to move this forward for @alexvanboxel? can we discuss this in an upcoming WG mtg?

[linsun]

@alexvanboxel I recommend you consider joining one of the upcoming build/test/release WG mtg: https://github.com/istio/community/blob/master/WORKING-GROUPS.md#working-group-meetings

[mikmatko]

The binaries are already built, we've extracted them from a docker file now. Enterprises are not switching to CentOS 8 as it doesn't offer the long-term support that CentOS 7 delivers.

Just came here to emphasize this. Any chance of this PR moving forward?

Many enterprises never migrated from CentOS 7 to CentOS 8. Those that have migrated to CentOS 8 are looking to migrate away, since CentOS 8 is going EOL soon. It is commonly thought that CentOS Stream 8 cannot replace CentOS 8. More viable alternatives, such as Rocky Linux, have popped up (even Google is providing Rocky Linux VMs now).

Those that are still using CentOS 7 have no plans to switch to CentOS 8 nor CentOS Stream 8.

CentOS 7 goes EOL 2024-06-30
CentOS 8 goes EOL 2021-12-31

This of course wasn't always the situation. CentOS 8 was supposed to be long-term supported. RedHat decided it is not.

[jacob-delgado]

@istio/wg-test-and-release-maintainers team, can you suggest how to move this forward for @alexvanboxel? can we discuss this in an upcoming WG mtg?

cc @linsun @alexvanboxel

I've added this to the T&R workgroup agenda for 9/28. Please attend to give your feedback. We are not committing to supporting CentOS 7 at this time, but in light of new information we can re-evaluate our position.

[jwendell]

We have a misunderstanding here.

The current centos rpm package is actually made for centos 7.
See this check and the base image where it is built. This image is used to build centos proxy in prow.

So, from my understanding, nothing needs to be done.

[jwendell]

hmm, never mind what I said. The envoy-centos binary is indeed for centos7 but the ordinary envoy works in centos8 and debian, and it's this one that's shipped. I got it.

So we are already building and testing envoy for centos7, only not shipping the resulting rpm in the release process. I don't think in any problem or additional cost in shipping it.

We could also rename current rpm to centos-8 so we end up shipping centos7 and centos8 rpm's, to make it more clear.

[ericvn]

We did discuss this on today's T&R WG call. The author of this PR did not attend, but we did spend a fair amount of time discussing it. Some of the comments raised included:

• Concern about the older glibc and Envoy support long-term.
• Not sure of current community commitment to continue to support another RPM long-term from the current attendees. Producing the image does imply support going forward for some amount of time. If there is an issue 1-yr down the road, who is going to look into it? A testing requirement was also mentioned.
• istio-ecosystem might be a way to make it available and not put hardship on the community for long-term on-going support.

Some additional comments:

• Who will be users of the new RPM?
  • Will we see a migration of CentOS 8 users back to CentOS 7 at the end of the year because they don't want to move to CentOS Stream? Or will they move to some other Linux?
  • Will there be new users if CentOS 7 is going away at the end of 2024?
  • This might be more of a question for the Environments WG. What is seen as a requirement going forward?

Some unanswered questions from the Istio standpoint. If CentOS 8 is no longer supported, do we need to continue support the CentOS 8 RPM, do we move to CentOS Stream or should we announce support ending as well?

• One thought would be to switch from providing a CentOS 8 RPM instead to a CentOS 7 RPM. But that still leads to the questions above.

[istio-testing]

@alexvanboxel: PR needs rebase.

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