Hi oVirt developers and users,

Some of you might be familiar with the oVirt repositories and all their flavors, while some of you are just familiar with the official releases.
The fact is, we have plenty of them and each has its own role and a right usage. Moreover, we did a significant overhaul on all the repositories in the past months,
So hopefully now it will be easier to explain which repo to use when.


I'll start with reviewing each oVirt repository and give a bit of background and the logic behind it, how to consume it and the relevant usage for it.
For simplicity, I'll review the repositories on the 4.1 release, but it valid for all other oVirt releases ( except 'master' which doesn't have an official or pre-release repositories ).

I will also upload this information to the oVirt.org site, but since this is important, I didn't want to wait with the sending this email.

oVirt repositories

Official repositories

Desc: here you can find the official signed oVirt RPMs, immediately after an official release has been done. 
Path: http://resources.ovirt.org/pub/ovirt-4.1/rpm/$distro
Update frequency: on every oVirt release, usually happens on a monthly cadence.
Release rpm: http://resources.ovirt.org/pub/yum-repo/ovirt-release41.rpm

Who should use it? 
oVirt users, developers or anyone who wants a final and official release 

Pre-release repositories

Desc: here you can find the pre-release bits of oVirt RC builds, just before they are released. 
Path: http://resources.ovirt.org/pub/ovirt-4.1-pre/rpm/$distro
Update frequency: usually on a weekly or bi-weekly basis 
Release rpm: http://resources.ovirt.org/pub/yum-repo/ovirt-release41-pre.rpm

Who should use it? 
oVirt users, developers or anyone who wants to try out oVirt new version before its out,
Keeping in mind this isn't a fully verified release and might still have critical bugs which are not fixed yet.

Packages in this repo are verified by automation and checked by humans for basic sanity before publishing.


Nightly snapshot (verified) repositories

Desc: here you can find the nightly snapshot of RPMs, which passed basic sanity by our 'oVirt System Tests' framework in the oVirt CI system.
Path: http://resources.ovirt.org/pub/ovirt-4.1-snapshot/rpm/$distro
Update frequency: Every night
Release rpm: http://resources.ovirt.org/pub/yum-repo/ovirt-release41-snapshot.rpm

Who should use it? 
oVirt users, developers or anyone who wants to try out oVirt latest bits right of the build oven! 
We trust our system tests, which already run more than 40 various tests such as 'add host', 'create VM', 'live migration' and more!

** Important note: the snapshot repositories are verified only in master currently, we might do the same for 4.1 soon, as we see no issues with master so far ** 

The above repos should suffice to most usres and developers, but if you feel its not enough and you still need a faster verified repo, look below! 



Advanced oVirt repositories


Builds artifacts repo

Desc: This is a new feature from oVirt 'standard CI' project, where each 'build-artifacts' job is actually a yum repo as well.
Path: http://jenkins.ovirt.org/job/ovirt-engine_4.1_build-artifacts-on-demand-el7-x86_64/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/exported-artifacts ( example )
Update frequency: after each commit or 'ci please build' comment 
Release rpm: N/A

Who should use it? 
oVirt developers who need latest RPMs from another oVirt project and cannot or need not wait for that project`s packages to pass OST".

oVirt developers running manual OST job and need to test an open Gerrit patch, using the 'ci please build' command.


Tested repositories

Desc: The tested repositories hold all the oVIrt packages which passed CI ( similar to snapshot repos ) and retain also version history for X versions back.
Path: http://resources.ovirt.org/repos/ovirt/tested/4.1/rpm/$distro
Update frequency: after each 'build artifacts' job is triggered by any oVirt project and if the packages passed sanity checks
Release rpm: N/A

Who should use it? 
If you want to have latest and greatest oVirt packages and can't wait for the nightly repo.
If you are testing upgrades or need more than one version of a pacakge in your repo.



Experimental repositories 

Desc: Internal CI repos which are a part of the 'experimental' flow which runs OST on each built package. 
Path: http://resources.ovirt.org/repos/ovirt/experimental/4.1/latest.tested/rpm/el7/$distro
Update frequency: after each 'build artifacts' job is triggered by any oVirt project and if the packages passed sanity checks
Release rpm: N/A

Who should use it? 
No one other than internal CI jobs.
These repos are constantly refreshed and RPMs are being removed from them, so they are very prone to errors, please don't use them.


I hope this makes a bit of order in all the repos and how to use them.
If you still have questions, please don't hesitate to contact the infra team at infra@ovirt.org or just reply to this thread.