Make it unnecessary to add new versions of known distros into the RID graph

[tmds]

Following the discussion on #57832.

We should look into the changes (to the host, nuget and sdk) that make it unnecessary to update the RID graph for new versions of Fedora, Alpine, ...

cc @ericstj @richlander @ViktorHofer @omajid

[ghost]

Tagging subscribers to this area: @Anipik, @safern, @ViktorHofer
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Issue Details

---

Following the discussion on #57832.

We should look into the changes (to the host, nuget and sdk) that make it unnecessary to update the RID graph for new versions of Fedora, Alpine, ...

cc @ericstj @richlander @ViktorHofer @omajid

Author:	tmds
Assignees:	-
Labels:	area-Infrastructure-libraries, untriaged
Milestone:	-

[ViktorHofer]

@ericstj who should own this issue? Sounds like any changes to how the RID is parsed and how RID graphs are represented will affect the host, nuget and the sdk. This probably doesn't belong into "area-infrastructure-libraries".

[tmds]

@ericstj can we aim to do this for .NET 7?

[ericstj]

I was discussing this recently with @eerhardt and I do think this needs to be done. @richlander @terrajobst @baronfel -- how do you think we can best represent this in .NET 7.0 planning?

[safern]

@ericstj I will change the area to area-host for now as it doesn't really belong to area-libraries-infrastrucure. I'd say maybe it would be better if this was a theme issue on dotnet/core and then have the relevant issues splitting the necessary work on each repo that involves this effort?

[ghost]

Tagging subscribers to this area: @vitek-karas, @agocke, @VSadov
See info in area-owners.md if you want to be subscribed.

Issue Details

---

Following the discussion on #57832.

We should look into the changes (to the host, nuget and sdk) that make it unnecessary to update the RID graph for new versions of Fedora, Alpine, ...

cc @ericstj @richlander @ViktorHofer @omajid

Author:	tmds
Assignees:	-
Labels:	area-Host, untriaged
Milestone:	-

[eerhardt]

We should look into the changes (to the host, nuget and sdk) that make it unnecessary to update the RID graph for new versions of Fedora,

This question is slightly off topic, but I see:

runtime/src/libraries/Microsoft.NETCore.Platforms/src/runtimeGroups.props

Lines 72 to 77 in 5dc1b4c

	<RuntimeGroup Include="fedora">
	<Parent>linux</Parent>
	<Architectures>x64;arm64</Architectures>
	<Versions>23;24;25;26;27;28;29;30;31;32;33;34;35;36</Versions>
	<TreatVersionsAsCompatible>false</TreatVersionsAsCompatible>
	</RuntimeGroup>

Why does centos and fedora have <TreatVersionsAsCompatible>false</TreatVersionsAsCompatible>, but rhel doesn't? Is forward compatibility not guaranteed in centos and fedora?

[tmds]

Is this included in the .NET 7 plan?

[eerhardt]

See related dotnet/designs#260

Is this included in the .NET 7 plan?

I don't think it is officially committed (yet). We just need to find the right path forward.

[omajid]

Why does centos and fedora have false, but rhel doesn't? Is forward compatibility not guaranteed in centos and fedora?

Sorry, just saw this question.

RHEL has minor versions, but CentOS, Fedora (and Rocky, etc) don't. The RHEL minor versions were not handled well by early versions of .NET so we had to add each minor version to the graph. And we also needed to make sure that those minor versions are considered compatible with each other, but not compatible with completely different versions of RHEL.

The RHEL section looks like this:

    <RuntimeGroup Include="rhel">
      <Parent>linux</Parent>
      <Architectures>x64</Architectures>
      <Versions>6</Versions>
    </RuntimeGroup>
    <RuntimeGroup Include="rhel">
      <Parent>linux</Parent>
      <Architectures>x64</Architectures>
      <Versions>7;7.0;7.1;7.2;7.3;7.4;7.5;7.6</Versions>
    </RuntimeGroup>
    <RuntimeGroup Include="rhel">
      <Parent>linux</Parent>
      <Architectures>x64;arm64</Architectures>
      <Versions>8;8.0;8.1</Versions>
    </RuntimeGroup>
    <RuntimeGroup Include="rhel">
      <Parent>linux</Parent>
      <Architectures>x64;arm64</Architectures>
      <Versions>9</Versions>
    </RuntimeGroup>

This basically sets up separate release branches (6, 7.x, 8.x, 9.x). Each of these branches is not compatible with others. But within a single release branch (eg, <Versions>7;7.0;7.1;7.2;7.3;7.4;7.5;7.6</Versions>), the lack of <TreatVersionsAsCompatible>false</TreatVersionsAsCompatible>, means they are compatible. In other words, the minor versions of RHEL 7 are compatible with each other, but not with RHEL 8 or 6 in the RID graph.

Fedora and CentOS and others put all their major versions together, so they explicitly use <TreatVersionsAsCompatible>false</TreatVersionsAsCompatible> so these major versions are not considered compatible with each other:

    <RuntimeGroup Include="fedora">
      <Parent>linux</Parent>
      <Architectures>x64;arm64</Architectures>
      <Versions>23;24;25;26;27;28;29;30;31;32;33;34;35;36;37</Versions>
      <TreatVersionsAsCompatible>false</TreatVersionsAsCompatible>
    </RuntimeGroup>

[tmds]

The changes that were made as part of dotnet/installer#14549 enable source-building .NET on distros that are not yet in the rid graph.
The changes have/are backported to 6.0 and 7.0.

Adding distros to the rid grah and backporting them is now solely for the purpose of making other distros aware they exist.