Gerald Pfeifer, the CTO of SUSE and chair of the openSUSE oversight committee, to the community to consider the initiative to unify the development and assembly processes of the openSUSE Leap and SUSE Linux Enterprise distributions. Currently, releases of openSUSE Leap are formed based on a core set of packages from the SUSE Linux Enterprise distribution, but packages for openSUSE are compiled separately from source packages. The essence is to unify the assembly processes of both distributions and to use finished binary packages from SUSE Linux Enterprise in openSUSE Leap.
In the first phase, it is proposed to merge the overlapping codebases of openSUSE Leap 15.2 and SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP2 as much as possible without sacrificing the functionality and stability of both distributions. In the second phase, alongside the classic release of openSUSE Leap 15.2, it's proposed to prepare a separate edition based on the executables from SUSE Linux Enterprise and to release an interim version in October 2020. In the third phase, in July 2021, it is planned to form the openSUSE Leap 15.3 release, by default using the executables from SUSE Linux Enterprise.
The use of the same packages will simplify migration from one distribution to another, save resources on building and testing, eliminate complexities in spec files (all differences defined at the spec file level will be unified) and make the submission and processing of bug reports simpler (allowing for a move away from diagnosing different package builds). openSUSE Leap will be positioned by SUSE as a development platform for the community and third-party partners. For openSUSE users, this change is beneficial as it provides the opportunity to use stable code from the enterprise distribution and well-tested packages. Updates covering overlapping packages will also be common and thoroughly tested by the SUSE quality control team.
The platform for developing new packages to be delivered in openSUSE Leap and SLE will remain the openSUSE Tumbleweed repository. The process of transferring changes to the base packages will not change (essentially, instead of building from SUSE's src packages, ready binary packages will be used). All shared packages will still be available in the Open Build Service for modification and forking. If there is a need to maintain different functionalities of common applications in openSUSE and SLE, additional functionality can be moved to openSUSE-specific packages (similar to branding element separation) or aimed for inclusion in SUSE Linux Enterprise. Packages for RISC-V and ARMv7 architectures, which are not supported in SUSE Linux Enterprise, are suggested to be built separately.
Source: opennet.ru
