After CentOS left the enterprise Linux scene as a free Red Hat replacement, various distributions attempted to fill in the gap. As a result, AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux have managed to break through and become the most popular Red Hat replacements.
The AlmaLinux Foundation was created as a non-profit organization to assure the continued existence of AlmaLinux as a forever-free OS without the risk of falling into the “benevolent” hands of large corporations.
As a result, the distribution is practically in the hands of the Linux community. So, this is probably the best option for its resistance to corporate interests and a guarantee of its future. An action that was warmly welcomed by the whole open source community.
And now, AlmaLinux is taking another step forward in following open-source best practices by opening up its whole distribution build system to the public.
ALBS (AlmaLinux Build System)
First, let’s clarify what ALBS is? ALBS, which stands for AlmaLinux Build System, is a project aiming to automate the building distribution processes and the packages, testing them, signing them, and delivering them to public repositories. The foundation of the ALBS was started back in 2012 by CloudLinux.
AlmaLinux Build System is geared for automation and minimizing human errors. In addition, it integrates with Jenkins for extended functionality.
Today we are adding the next stage of transparency for our build processes by releasing anonymous, read-only access to our build system. This allows anyone to see what packages are being built right now, when a particular package was built, when a package build fails, and all the logs associated with the build process for each and every package.
Making the AlmaLinux Build System public provides higher transparency into the process of building AlmaLinux from its source to its release into public repositories.
Anyone can view what packages are being built, when a specific package was built and when a package build fails. Additionally, all logs related to the particular build are also publicly available.
You are probably asking yourself, what is the idea of all this? First and foremost, the goal is to establish maximum transparency throughout the AlmaLinux development process.
On top of that, lifting the curtain to the public on the entire process of distribution building is a good move toward attracting new contributors and is inherent to the open-source philosophy.
The new build system allows community members to create packages for AlmaLinux OS 8.6 and AlmaLinux OS 9.0 for all platforms based on the x86 64, Arm aarch64, PowerPC ppc64le, and s90x architectures.
The AlmaLinux Build System provides different options for finding and filtering specific builds. The more details you supply, the more specific your search will be. The choices are as follows:
- Build Author
- Project Name
- Git tag, branch, or source RPM (SRPM)
- RPM package name
- RPM package epoch
- RPM package version
- RPM release release
- RPM package architecture
- Platform
- Build task architecture
Of course, only members of the AlmaLinux Packaging Team can sign and release packages. An unauthorized user can see whether the signing was successful or unsuccessful and which PGP key was used.
Access to the new AlmaLinux Build System is available at build.almalinux.org. The source code for the AlmaLinux Build System is released under the GPLv3 license and is available on GitHub. Additionally, a User Guide for the new version of the build system can be found here.
In conclusion, the AlmaLinux community is hard at work creating the best free CentOS alternative. In addition, AlmaLinux’s every move proves its commitment to maximum openness to the Linux community. Something we can only be happy about!
