Technically CentOS Stream doesn't have minor versions. Yet a lot of tooling shared between RHEL, CentOS and clones rely on minor version value in certain scenarios.

To provide the compatibility with this tooling we set the artificial value for minor version of CentOS Stream in centos-release package and it is currently set to 0

While this works in most simple cases where one just needs a placeholder, it fails in cases where version needs to be compared.

For a real life example:

1) a package built by RHEL Automotive has `redhat-release >= 9.1` condition in the spec file, and it works on RHEL and Alma but fails on CentOS Stream.

2) In convert2RHEL there is a draft which hardcodes CentOS Stream version to 999

https://github.com/oamg/convert2rhel/blob/5c13c186423a04454f2b341a076566ab529f1009/convert2rhel/systeminfo.py#L195

Since CentOS Stream runs continuously ahead of any given RHEL minor release, let's set its minor version to a value which is higher than any possible RHEL minor release value.

Proposal

Let's consider options:

A

• risky as it introduces letters in the previously numerical string

99

can work

100

+ higher than any possible RHEL release

+ explicit, and easy to explain

+ looks round

+ works as a test for RHEL 8.10 and RHEL 9.10 releases: if your version comparison works with 100 > 9 than it will work for 10 > 9 too,

10

+ looks round

+ works as a test for RHEL 8.10 and RHEL 9.10 releases: if your version comparison works with 100 > 9 than it will work for 10 > 9 too,

 + higher than any release except 8.10 highlighting that RHEL 8.10 will eventually run ahead of the CentOS Stream

  - RHEL 8.10 will get ahead of CentOS Stream 8 only after the 8.10 release, and overlapping versions here may introduce additional conflicts during the 8.10 phase.

 - implicit change in the workflow, which people need to be aware of

All in all I think the option 100 looks most beneficial.