Add AlmaLinux OS support

[LKHN]

AlmaLinux OS is an open-source, community-driven Linux operating system that fills the gap left by the discontinuation of the CentOS Linux stable release. AlmaLinux OS is a 1:1 binary compatible clone of RHEL® guided and built by the community.

Currently two AlmaLinux OS versions available, 8 and 9 for x86_64, AArch64, ppc64le, s390x(9 only, the support for 8, on the way)

https://almalinux.org/

https://wiki.almalinux.org/#about

[karianna]

Checking with PMC on this.

[LKHN]

@karianna Hi, thanks! Do you have any update?

[karianna]

Haven't discussed fully yet, but early feedback is that in general we're trying to avoid a proliferation of supported distros :-).

our instructions tell people to add a linux with centos into their yum configuration, which will work ok on Alma too. Would that suffice?

[LKHN]

Dear @karianna,

Thanks for the reply.

Since they're the same RPMs, using the rhel is enough for the rhel and it's clones but you've already implemented rhel clones like centos oraclelinux and rocky but not almalinux. Your first feedback are "avoid a proliferation of supported distros" when the AlmaLinux's community trying¹ to help to add it.

As a user of the AlmaLinux OS, may I ask you about the reason behind that?

The instruction² you had pointed not working on AlmaLinux as you see in the resulted adoptium.repo file:

[Adoptium]
name=Adoptium
baseurl=https://packages.adoptium.net/artifactory/rpm/almalinux/$releasever/$basearch
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://packages.adoptium.net/artifactory/api/gpg/key/public

Fastest updates, release dates, multi-architecute support and great cloud integration and availbility just three of the reasons to consider AlmaLinux OS a good CentOS Linux replacament and worth to add to the supported OS list.

Version	RHEL	CentOS Linux	AlmaLinux OS	Oracle Linux	Rocky Linux
8.3	October 29, 2020	December 7, 2020	March 30, 2021	November 13, 2020	Not Released
8.4	May 18, 2021	June 3, 2021	May 26, 2021	May 26, 2021	June 21, 2021
8.5	November 9, 2021	November 16, 2021	Nov 12, 2021	November 16, 2021	November 15, 2021
8.6	May 10, 2022	Discontinued	May 12, 2022	May 17, 2022	May 16, 2022
9.0	May 17, 2022	Discontinued	May 26, 2022	July 1, 2022	Not Released

I will wait for the answer of the question I had asked and the result of the full discussion.

Thanks.

Footnotes

1. https://github.com/adoptium/installer/pull/500 ↩

2. https://adoptium.net/installation/linux/#_centosrhelfedora_instructions ↩

[karianna]

Thanks for the extra detailed info, will take that back to the PMC.

[karianna]

In our installers/linux/Jenkinsfile we have:

'redhat' : [
'rpm/centos/7',
'rpm/rocky/8',
'rpm/rhel/7',
'rpm/rhel/8',
'rpm/rhel/9',
'rpm/fedora/35',
'rpm/fedora/36',
'rpm/oraclelinux/8',
'rpm/amazonlinux/2',
'rpm/oraclelinux/7'
],

We may actually need to remove everything that isn't rpm/rhel/* as well as update the documentation on how to use the rpm/rhel/* based version for a user's specific Linux distro.

That combined with a doc change on the website (don't recommend the specific distro name, but use rhel instead and provide a mapping table.

e.g. If you're using Fedora 36 then that maps to rhel version 8 (or whatever)

An open challenge will be around the rhel version.

[LKHN]

Dear @karianna,

Although I have not gotten any answer "why the AlmaLinux OS was left out when implementing RHEL clones" yet, I think the proposed approach makes sense in terms of unifying all clones in rhel/8 and rhel/9. IMHO separating fedora would be a great idea in the long run. For instance, some changes with the new Fedora release could make the universal RPM spec file more complex. Therefore, use a separate spec file for Fedora.

Since the new proposed way to use the rhel repo for AlmaLinux OS when the rhel/9 will be ready? It would help us with the AlmaLinux OS 8 and 9 Temurin container images and a wiki page how to use Temurin on AlmaLinux OS.

[karianna]

Dear @karianna,

Although I have not gotten any answer "why the AlmaLinux OS was left out when implementing RHEL clones" yet, I think the proposed approach makes sense in terms of unifying all clones in rhel/8 and rhel/9. IMHO separating fedora would be a great idea in the long run. For instance, some changes with the new Fedora release could make the universal RPM spec file more complex. Therefore, use a separate spec file for Fedora.

Since the new proposed way to use the rhel repo for AlmaLinux OS when the rhel/9 will be ready? It would help us with the AlmaLinux OS 8 and 9 Temurin container images and a wiki page how to use Temurin on AlmaLinux OS.

If I have this correct I think that rhel/9 will come in this July PSU but we have an infra as code freeze on currently so the reworking of all of this won't be formally in place until the Oct PSU. It's going to take us a little while to untangle all of this I'm afraid!

[zdtsw]

some updates on this, we have already added support for rhle 9 a while back
https://github.com/adoptium/installer/blame/db08477feb5b2a2a0117cc7e38e7566a1862dd1a/linux/Jenkinsfile#L308