[scl.org] Image naming for centos-based images

[Ben Parees]

Karanbir and I talked briefly today, and i'd like to just lay out a couple
things from an openshift perspective:

1) we encourage the use of both rhel and centos images (rhel for support,
centos to try), so we really want the images to have the same names (other
than the namespace/org) because it makes for a much more consistent
transition, better support experience, etc.  So i do not like any approach
that results in one naming convention for centos images and another for the
"rhscl" images.

2) we're shipping OSE3.1 nov 19th and things need to be locked down earlier
than that.  Since this will be the first release shipping these new SCL
images, we have some freedom to change the names now.  But once that
happens it's going to be much more painful to change them.  So if things
are changing, we need a decision asap.

3) I suggested that maybe we could use aliases to solve some of this...
you can still provide a "mariadb" docker alias for the seamless "i don't
care what i get" experience, but still maintain multiple streams of
versions/etc by backing that alias with a more specifically named pull
spec, like the names we use today.

4) i'm mostly willing to concede dropping the rhel7/centos7 suffice from
the names now that we have separate namespaces for the repositories...but
keeping the version number in the name still seems important to avoid the
issues with users not being able to pull "latest" or not understand what
they have pulled.

I'm also adding Dan McPherson and Clayton Coleman to this thread as they
are the lead architects for OpenShift and should also weigh in on any image
naming decisions we're making.



On Thu, Oct 8, 2015 at 11:43 AM, Honza Horak <hhorak at redhat.com> wrote:

> On 10/07/2015 11:40 AM, Karanbir Singh wrote:
>
>> variant B: centos/mariadb:10.0
>>>>
>>>
>>> * less complicated * no redundancy * it is similar to what docker
>>> hub uses for official images now
>>>
>>
>> adding a few more bits here for B :
>>
>> * pretty much the standard way for the entire docker ecosystem to work
>> on right now ( that redhat is largely absent from )
>>
>
> Fair point. Anyway, what a sane user actually does IMO is not `docker pull
> mariadb`, but rather `docker pull mariadb:5.5`. And  since `docker search
> centos/mariadb` doesn't show available versions, how can user know which
> versions are available? there is only centos/mariadb in the output.
>
> So, user can only guess what versions are available or can find it
> somewhere else.. in the case there would be the version in the image name,
> it would be listed in the search output, which seems like a benefit for
> user to me.
>
> Btw. did you know that there has been already centos/mariadb available on
> docker hub?
>
> * provides scope for future expansion as we abstract away from
>> delivery mechanics to focus on payload
>>
>
> I still don't consider this to be related to delivery mechanism.
>
> * allows for distro decompose and co-exist in a 'as default' manner (
>> admittedly arguable! )
>>
>> A relatively sane proof for this model is looking at how many people
>> run a 'yum install mariadb' V/s 'yum install
>> mariadb-5.5.44-1.el7_1.x86_64' when they want a mariadb install;
>> having a centos/mariadb and using tag space to extend the multiple
>> version availability, allows us to extend the same user expectation.
>>
>
> Sure, nobody runs 'yum install mariadb-5.5.44-1.el7_1.x86_64' and just
> uses `mariadb`, but we must realize that users always install RPMs for the
> correct platform (nobody configures yum to install el6 packages on el7) and
> we also provide only one version of the mariadb in the system, so users are
> sure what version they get. Once there are more versions (as SCLs or if we
> find any other format), users will install particular version -- `yum
> install mariadb55`, because they care (in most cases).
>
> Docker is new in this sense because you have all versions build on various
> kernels on one heap. This is not something we have experience with in RPM
> world.
>
> As mentioned in this thread [2], there is a new API spec being
>>> prepared [3], which will be a chance to change naming scheme to
>>> something less redundant, if the current way proofs to be
>>> problematic.
>>>
>>
>> [1] isnt complete so its clearly a work in progress, how about we just
>> work on getting that complete now and address the whole piece together
>> ? or is the SCL portion left as TBA allowing the scl space to do
>> something completely different ?
>>
>
> The SCL part is there already, but covers only RH registry. I wish we
> could sync on one schema over Fedora/RHEL/CentOS as well, but I don't see a
> compromise here, that would be fine for all. Or maybe missing willingness
> to accept some compromise, I don't know.
>
> Secondly, if you consider the inertia against looking at a change now
>> largely driven by we-already-have-something, what are the chances that
>> this is going to go away when the api-spec comes up ( and we have even
>> more water under the bridge ? ).
>>
>
> IMO the chance would be big enough if we'll be convinced the current way
> is not good enough for users. If we'll see the current way is fine for them
> and doesn't make any troubles, then why changing it..
>
> Honza
>



-- 
Ben Parees | OpenShift
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