The folks at OpenSUSE have started to consider an initiative to maintain a development in conjunction with the versions of openSUSE Leap and SUSE Linux Enterprise and is that Gerald Pfeiffer, SUSE technical director and chair of the oversight committee of openSUSE, ssuggested that the community consider an initiative to bring together the development and build processes of the OpenSUSE Leap and SUSE Linux Enterprise distributions.
This was raised because currently openSUSE Leap versions are based on the basic set of packages for SUSE Linux Enterprise distribution, but openSUSE packages compiled separately from source packages. The essence of the proposal is to unify the work of building distributions and using ready-to-use binary packages from SUSE Linux Enterprise in openSUSE Leap.
Today I have some interesting news and a proposal to pass on: SUSE wants to take a further step in opening up to the openSUSE community and suggests taking the openSUSE Leap and SUSE Linux Enterprise relationship to a new level.
Internally, this idea is called "Closing the jump gap" and proposes to strengthen and unite more closely:
- Developer Communities, by focusing on openSUSE Leap as a development platform for communities and industry partners.
- User communities, by taking advantage of the benefits of a stable enterprise code base and the speed of community contributions.
- The openSUSE Leap and SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) code bases, not only sharing sources, but also offering the SUSE Linux Enterprise binaries for inclusion in openSUSE Leap.
In the first stage, intends to merge the code bases intersection of openSUSE Leap 15.2 and SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP2, if possible, without losing the functionality and stability of both distributions.
In the second stage, in parallel with the classic version of openSUSE Leap 15.2, it is proposed to prepare a separate edition based on executable files of SUSE Linux Enterprise and release an interim version in October 2020.
In the third stage, in July 2021, it is planned to formulate the openSUSE Leap 15.3 release, by default using SUSE Linux Enterprise executable files in it.
Using the same packages will simplify migration from one distribution to another, It will save compilation and testing resources, get rid of complications in spec files (all differences defined at the spec file level will be unified), and make it easier to send and process error messages (allow you to get away from diagnosing different sets of packages).
openSUSE Leap will be promoted by SUSE as a development platform for the community and external partners. For openSUSE users, the change is beneficial because of the ability to use stable industrial distribution code and well-tested packages. The updates covering the removed packages will also be general and well tested by the SUSE QC team.
We are proud to see Leap and Tumbleweed grow and evolve, alongside SUSE Linux Enterprise.
This effort of our engineers working alongside others in the OpenSUSE community will benefit everyone involved for many years to come.
The repository openSUSE Tumbleweed will continue to be the platform for developing new packages for openSUSE Leap and SLE. The process of transferring changes to the base packages will not change (in fact, instead of compiling from SUSE src packages, we will use out-of-the-box binary packages).
All shared packages will continue to be available to the Open Build Service to modify and create forks.
If it is necessary to maintain a different functionality of the common applications in openSUSE and SLE, additional functionality can be transferred to specific openSUSE packages (similar to branding element separation) or to achieve the inclusion of necessary functionality in SUSE Linux Enterprise.
Packages for RISC-V and ARMv7 architectures that are not supported by SUSE Linux Enterprise are proposed to be compiled separately.
If you want to know more about it, you can consult the details In the following link.