Contributing to CentOS Stream - Quickstart

To start making contributions you’ll need to log in to the following places:

To work with dist-git repositories and inspect artifacts or logs in the buildsystem, you need centpkg installed on your workstation:

CentOS Stream defects and feature requests are filed under the RHEL project in issues.redhat.com.

The Component is the name of the package that you want to patch

Describe the change that you’d like to make, be sure to double-check for existing issues that describe the feature request or problem that you’re seeing

RHEL developers use issues to coordinate with RHEL QE, schedule work with other maintainers, and track progress against development milestones. RHEL maintainers need to get an issue approved for a release before they can merge your change, but don’t worry, this is something they take care of for you. You just need to file the issue and reference it.

There are 2 ways to contribute, Source Git is in use by developers of packages that want to accept contributions directly to the source code and the package specs in the same place.

Dist-Git is a familiar packaging format for folks who have done packaging in Fedora. The package specs are stored in git, and archives of the actual source code are located in the lookaside.

In the Gitlab repository you want to change, click the Fork button on the front page to create your own fork.

Examples:

Every commit made during your contribution MUST come with an issue referenced in the commit message.

Once the commits are how you like them, push to your fork in Gitlab.

The easiest way to open a merge request is to visit the target repository under the https://gitlab.com/redhat/centos-stream namespace and click the New Merge Request button on the Merge Requests tab.

TODO: Image of the merge-requests tab

Make sure to choose your fork and branch under the Source Branch. And the CentOS Stream repository + branch in Target Branch

TODO: Image of Source branch / Target Branch

RHEL maintainers will work with you to evaluate your patch, review any needed changes, and potentially merge your request. If your patch is accepted for inclusion in CentOS Stream and RHEL, the RHEL maintainer will perform a package build and RPMs will show up in the buildsystem: https://kojihub.stream.centos.org/

Packages follow a regular process from build to release, all managed by tags in the buildsystem. Here’s a list of important koji tags and what they mean:

(Note the c9s part can be also c8s or c10s for CentOS Stream 8 or 10 respectively.)

For example, if you see a package that is listed in the -gate tag but not the -pending tag you know that it hasn’t passed its tests yet, and won’t make it into a compose until those are fixed.

If you want to make changes to the overall distribution itself, or the artifacts produced by composes, you’ll want to refer to the Distribution component in the RHEL project. Please file an appropriate issue describing the change you’d like to make.

If you’re familiar with Pungi, you’ll recognize the configs in https://gitlab.com/redhat/centos-stream/release-engineering/pungi-centos

These configs follow a Fork/Merge-Request workflow and require review from CentOS Stream release engineers to be merged

Comps control package groups, and repository split configurations. Changes here most likely require a Distribution component issue in the RHEL project.

https://gitlab.com/redhat/centos-stream/release-engineering/comps

Packages are built into a compose that happens multiple times a week, triggered by the Releng Jenkins. The results can be found on composes.stream.centos.org.

How often they happen is defined in a Jenkins config file - see the c9s config for example.

Once a compose is complete, it gets tested by the testing Jenkins instance. The results of these tests are reviewed manually and then pushed out to mirrors at mirror.stream.centos.org by Releng. This is currently a manual process and happens usually once a week.