2.8 Managing Channel Life Cycles

The software described in this documentation is either no longer supported or is in extended support.
Oracle recommends that you upgrade to a current supported release.

2.8 Managing Channel Life Cycles

The spacewalk-manage-channel-lifecycle command allows you to manage the life cycle of a software channel from development, through testing to production, as shown in the following examples:

Create a development channel dev-ol6-x86_64-appsvr based on the latest available packages in ol6-x86_64-appsvr.
```
# spacewalk-manage-channel-lifecycle -c ol6-x86_64-appsvr --init
```
Promote the packages from the development channel to the test channel test-ol6-x86_64-appsvr.
```
# spacewalk-manage-channel-lifecycle -c dev-ol6-x86_64-appsvr --promote
```
Promote the packages from the test channel to the production channel prod-ol6-x86_64-appsvr.
```
# spacewalk-manage-channel-lifecycle -c test-ol6-x86_64-appsvr --promote
```

You can save the state of a channel by creating an archive channel archive-date-channel.

# spacewalk-manage-channel-lifecycle -c prod-ol6-x86_64-appsvr --archive

If you need to restore the state of a channel, use the --rollback option and specify the archived version of the channel that you want to restore, for example:

# spacewalk-manage-channel-lifecycle -c archive-20110520-test-ol6-x86_64-appsvr --rollback

Use the -l option to list the channels:

# spacewalk-manage-channel-lifecycle -l
Channel tree:

 1. archive-20160203-ol6-x86_64-appsvr
      \__ archive-20160203-prod-ol6-x86_64-appcmd
      \__ archive-20160203-prod-ol6-x86_64-applib

 2. dev-ol6-x86_64-appsvr
      \__ dev-ol6-x86_64-appcmd
      \__ dev-ol6-x86_64-applib
  
 3. ol6-x86_64-appsvr
      \__ ol6-x86_64-appcmd
      \__ ol6-x86_64-applib

 4. prod-ol6-x86_64-appsvr
      \__ prod-ol6-x86_64-appcmd
      \__ prod-ol6-x86_64-applib

 5. test-ol6-x86_64-appsvr
      \__ test-ol6-x86_64-appcmd
      \__ test-ol6-x86_64-applib