Terminology

Release

(Product) Release is a collection of software with unique identity and life cycle.

Notes

  • It is advised to separate updates from minor releases for better content tracking.

  • Release should be immutable - once a release is finished, it’s content or definition must never change.

  • When designing metadata or data schemas, Releases should carry all information even if there is certain duplicity. Product Versions and Products should not carry any data. These are only for grouping and organizing Releases.

Examples

  • Fedora 21 (f-21)

  • Fedora 21 Updates (f-21-updates)

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.0 (rhel-7.0)

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1 (rhel-7.1)

  • Satellite 5.6.0 for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 (satellite-5.6.0-rhel7)

Product Version

Product Version is a group of product Releases with the same name and major version.

Examples

  • Fedora 21 (f-21)

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 (rhel-7)

  • Satellite 5.6 (satellite-5.6)

Product

Product is a group of Product Versions with the same name.

Examples

  • Fedora (f)

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (rhel)

  • Satellite (satellite)

Base Product

Base Product usually indicates operating system a Release runs on. In reality it often matches with Product Version of that OS.

Examples

  • Fedora 21

  • Red Hat Enteprise Linux 7

Compose

Compose is a Release snapshot with an unique ID derived from Release and compose date.

Notes

  • Compose should consist of well defined building blocks, ideally described by metadata (.treeinfo, repodata, …)

Examples

  • RHEL-7.0-YYYYMMDD.0

  • Satellite-5.6.0-RHEL-7-YYYYMMDD.0

Variant

Both Composes and Releases are divide into Variants. These contain different Release content subsets targeting different users (Server, Workstation).

Examples

  • RHEL-7.0-YYYYMMDD.0 / Server

  • RHEL-7.0-YYYYMMDD.0 / Workstation

Tree

Tree is a Variant for specified architecture.

Examples

  • RHEL-7.0-YYYYMMDD.0 / Server / x86_64

  • RHEL-7.0-YYYYMMDD.0 / Server / ppc64

  • RHEL-7.0-YYYYMMDD.0 / Workstation / x86_64

Versioning

Versioning should be as simple as possible. Recommended schema is dot separated numbers:

  • X – major version / product version

  • X.Y – minor version / update version / release version

  • X.Y.Z – bugfix version / hotfix version

Note

It is technically possible to use arbitrary string as a version, but this is highly discouraged as it does not allow sorting. If you need it, just start your version with any non-digit character.

Milestones

Milestones are just labels on a Release. They shouldn’t affect how a Release is versioned (e.g. no Release version change on Beta).

Milestone Labels

  • <milestone_name>-<version>.<respin>

  • <milestone_name>-<version> stands for planned milestone

  • <respin> is internal-only numbering

Milestone Names

  • DevelPhaseExit – DEV finished major features, QE performs acceptance testing for entering the Testing phase

  • InternalAlpha – Internal Alpha, usually tweaking compose for the first public release

  • Alpha – Public Alpha

  • InternalSnapshot – Snapshots between Alpha and Beta, usually only for QE purposes

  • Beta – Public Beta

  • Snapshot – Snapshots between Beta and RC

  • RC – Release Candidates

  • Update – post-GA updates

Examples

  • (rhel-7.0) Alpha-1.0

  • (rhel-7.0) Beta-1.0

  • (rhel-7.0) Beta-1.1