Patch or build number

Rocky Linux General
1

Hi,

there is a patch or build number (Major.Minor.Patch/Build) to determine that there is an updated version?
This would be important for us to determine that a change is present and we should update Rocky Linux (see change log which based on a date: Rocky Linux 8 Change Log - Documentation).

Regards
Matthias

2

Rocky (8) is a set of packages derived from sources of RHEL (8). Each RHEL “point update” makes larger changes to the set. Current Rocky is based on RHEL 8.4. A beta for RHEL 8.5 is already out and official RHEL 8.5 release can be expected Nov/Dec. Rocky will release 8.5-based set soon after.

Between point updates Red Hat releases security and bug fixes for current RHEL. Those are much smaller subsets and practically never affect features. They are released when necessary. To my knowledge there is no Patch/Build versioning for the whole set, just for the individual packages.

You can run dnf check-update, which lists available updates for the packages that you have installed.
You can install (and configure) dnf-automatic, a " scheduled job" that can even auto-install updates.

Unlike CentOS, Rocky repositories have metadata that flags security-related updates so that you can limit auto-updates to just those, (rather than all patches).

3

Hello @matthias.scholze

they also released live iso

hope that help and have a nice day :slight_smile:

4

Hi @JustSomeone,
thanks. We very much hope for detailed Major.Minor.Patch information!
Regards Matthias

5

@matthias.scholze you very welcome :slight_smile:

6

When a point release (eg 8.4, 8.5, etc) are released, packages that are updated could have major version change, a minor version change, or a simple release version number change. Whatever the case may be, the dist tag will be el8. For example. In 8.4, powertop is at version 2.12-2, but in 8.5 it is expected to be 2.14-1. The dist tag will stay el8.

Now let’s say for the sake of the example that there’s a patch or otherwise on that package during 8.5. Typically the release number (the -1) will increment +1 and the dist tag will change to el8_5.

For packages that don’t get updated will keep their previous versions and dist tags typically (there are some exceptions where they drop back to el8 in upstream RHEL, but it’s far and few between).

As an side, we’re hoping to deprecate that change log section of documentation in favor of an announcement mail list, which should help us be able to publish what’s being updated or changed, including proper versions and the like. We’re pretty close to making the mail list system public.

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