[CentOS-devel] freetype package missed in repo

Wed Aug 4 22:21:14 UTC 2021
Nico Kadel-Garcia <nkadel at gmail.com>

On Wed, Aug 4, 2021 at 8:01 AM Josh Boyer <jwboyer at redhat.com> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Aug 4, 2021 at 6:14 AM Leon Fauster via CentOS-devel
> <centos-devel at centos.org> wrote:
> >
> > On 04.08.21 03:33, Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
> > > On Tue, Aug 3, 2021 at 7:49 PM Leon Fauster via CentOS-devel
> > > <centos-devel at centos.org> wrote:
> > >>
> > >> I wonder why this package not available anymore?
> > >>
> > >> # LANG=C yum reinstall freetype
> > >> Last metadata expiration check: 1:04:59 ago on Wed Aug  4 00:38:21 2021.
> > >> Installed package freetype-2.9.1-5.el8.x86_64 (from baseos) not available.
> > >> Error: No packages marked for reinstall.
> > >>
> > >> Any clues?
> > >
> > > Because the CentOS 8.4 package is freetype-2.9.1-4, according to the
> > > local mirrors. Did you perhaps install that from a CentOS 8 Stream
> > > repo?
> > >
> >
> > Here my context: I am comparing two nodes
> > based on CS8 (Centos 8 Stream ). One have
> >
> > freetype-2.9.1-5.el8.x86_64
> > and the other have
> > freetype-2.9.1-4.el8_3.1.x86_64
>
> At one point in time during RHEL 8.4 development, freetype-2.9.1-5.el8
> was set to be shipped.  However, it only fixed a CVE and that CVE was
> already fixed by the freetype-2.9.1-4.el8_3.1 that as shipped as part
> of a batch update.  There was no reason to ship a build that didn't do
> anything, so it was dropped on the RHEL side.

This  kind of behavior is a powerful reminder of one of the problems
of CentOS 8 Stream. Has there *ever* been a CentOS package published
and then yanked back from the public repos before? I can't think of
any, and I'm afraid it's likely to recur as other beta packages are
tested and dropped without notice.

The "simple" solution is the same as that for the frequently ephemeral
packages in EPEL: maintain, and deploy only from, designated internal
snapshots for continuing access to discarded packages used in your
clusters or consistently deployed working environments. It's a pain in
the keister, and not even addressable by spacewalk unless spacewalk is
set to maintain its own, purely aggregated and never pruned internal
mirrors.