[CentOS-devel] Reasoning behind RHEL8 packages without corresponding -devel?

Sat Oct 19 16:33:05 UTC 2019
Leon Fauster <leonfauster at googlemail.com>

Am 19.10.19 um 16:28 schrieb Kaleb Keithley:
> On Sat, Oct 19, 2019 at 9:27 AM Scott Dowdle <dowdle at montanalinux.org 
> <mailto:dowdle at montanalinux.org>> wrote:
> 
>     . what has been missing here is the "reason" (some of) the devel
>     packages aren't being released.
> 
> 
> This question was answered earlier in this thread (by me even), so I'm a 
> bit confused why you say the reason is missing.
> 
> In the case of libbluray-devel, it's because Red Hat only uses a very 
> small piece of that library, and doesn't want to have to support the 
> whole library, including being liable for CVEs and other bugs in the 
> parts of the library it doesn't use.
> 
> I don't know why libXvMC-devel wasn't released originally. As they 
> appear to have decided to go ahead and release it, apparently wasn't for 
> the same reason as libbluray-devel.
> 
> the src.rpm is available. Build it for yourself if Red Hat and CentOS 
> aren't providing what you want. As a maintainer of packages in the 
> CentOS Storage SIG, even I have to build and provide packages in the SIG 
> that Red Hat and CentOS don't provide, e.g. userspace-rcu.. (They're in 
> EPEL, but currently CBS doesn't/can't use EPEL.)  I don't understand why 
> people have so much trouble with this.


I can speak only for myself. Why this missing empathy on upstreams side?

The experience forms the expectation. All major releases didn't have 
this issue of missing devel packages. A totally missing package is a 
different story and not comparable. I am rebuilding packages and 
building a local repository just to have a working EL8 desktop 
environment, so thats not the case.

Its a normal expectation having canonical packages accessible. You also 
get wet when going swimming. In the old days devel files were included
in the main rpm. What I'm saying the main and the devel rpm packages 
belong together. The splitting is artificial and not releasing it is 
even more.

As I stated already in my bug report: "If I am correct, RH's strategy is 
to promote their platform to customers and customers being able to 
_build_ and deliver their applications (one example is the Red Hat 
Universal Base Image). So, its a natural expectation having the 
corresponding devel package ..."

Do not get me wrong. You guys did a great work. Despite the missing 
statement why this (business?) decision (besides the statement you
made for a specific package), if you do not want to support a package
then do not release it at all ...

   plainrhel8$ LANG=C rpm -ev libbluray --test
   error: Failed dependencies:
   libbluray.so.2()(64bit) is needed by (installed) gvfs-1.36.2-2.el8_0.1

Anyway, I think we all have a notion about how the iceberg looks under 
the water :-)

Happy Weekend!

Leon