[CentOS-devel] Missing packages on Devel repo

Thu Nov 18 14:11:27 UTC 2021
Nico Kadel-Garcia <nkadel at gmail.com>

On Thu, Nov 18, 2021 at 7:45 AM Josh Boyer <jwboyer at redhat.com> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Nov 18, 2021 at 7:15 AM Nico Kadel-Garcia <nkadel at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, Nov 17, 2021 at 4:46 PM Brian Stinson <brian at bstinson.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > On Wed, Nov 17, 2021, at 14:47, Odilon Junior wrote:
> > >
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > As the $SUBJECT says, after the latest release of Centos 8,  the Devel[1] repo is not populated.
> > >
> > > I can see the packages for 8.4.2105[2]. Is this expected for this latest release?
> > >
> > > ---
> > > Regards,
> > > Odilon
> > >
> > > 1 - http://mirror.centos.org/centos/8/Devel/x86_64/
> > > 2 - https://vault.centos.org/8.4.2105/Devel/
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > CentOS-devel mailing list
> > > CentOS-devel at centos.org
> > > https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos-devel
> > >
> > >
> > > That is expected. Just a reminder CentOS Linux 8 goes End Of Life in December: https://www.centos.org/centos-linux-eol/ please plan accordingly.
> >
> > I don't think anyone expected this. There was no reason to expect the
> > individual channel to be shut off several months in advance of the EOL
> > of the operating system. It's like moving the family to a new house
> > only after the move announce that the dog is not coming with us.
> >
> > This breaks working tools, like my tools that backport samba with full
> > and stable Heimdal based Kerberos  According to the Samba maintainers,
> > the MIT kerberos used by the latest Fedora releases is not yet well
> > enough integrated for production work, which is why I publish
> > https://github.com/nkadel/samba4repo/ for Fedor and for RHEL releases.
> > But they rely on 'quota-devel' for compilation, which is used by RHEL
> > and CentOS for compiling their more limited versions of Samba but is
> > arbitrarily hidden under tablecloth over in the 'Devel' channel.
>
> quota-devel is available in PowerTools
>
> http://mirror.centos.org/centos/8-stream/PowerTools/x86_64/os/Packages/quota-devel-4.04-14.el8.x86_64.rpm
> http://mirror.centos.org/centos/8/PowerTools/x86_64/os/Packages/quota-devel-4.04-14.el8.x86_64.rpm

It was previously over in 'Devel', until May as hinted by the RPM
timestamps. Try:

       mock -r epel-8-x86_64 install quota-devel

That works now if the 'Devel' repo is left disabled, but if the
'Devel' repo is enabled, which it was in my "mock" setups due to just
this package, it now breaks. That's no longer a direct hindrance, but
it left my setups broken yesterday.

I'm afraid it reinforces my point about arbitrary and software
breaking re-arrangements of RPMs. It's part of why some companies and
some developers are simply refusing to touch RHEL 8 and CentOS 8.

> > > If you need a package that was previously in the Devel repo to support your migration you may download from vault.centos.org or from the buildsystem: https://koji.mbox.centos.org
> > >
> > > --Brian
> >
> > This kind of arbitrary, unannounced and unwelcome change is part of
> > why people are losing trust in Red Hat and in CentOS as a reliable
> > rebuild of RHEL It's mirrored by the very peculiar and illogical split
> > up of "ansible" to "ansible-core" and "ansible", which I've written
> > about elsewhere. This kind of refactoring is unwelcome and breaks
> > things, I'd have expected better from RHEL a few years ago. Now....
> > I've lost considerable confidence in Red Hat and in CentOS
>
> ansible is a separate product from RHEL and is not part of RHEL
> itself.  The refactoring is something the Ansible product is pursuing
> and we have to adapt to their plans.  As a result, we will be
> including ansible-core in RHEL to enable rhel-system-roles, but the
> bulk of what people consider 'ansible' to be will still need to be
> acquired from outside of RHEL.

That makes sense on the part of RHEL maintainers. In fact, I've
published backports from Fedora rawhide which EPEL or RHEL are welcome
to, over at https://github.com/nkadel/ansiblerepo/. I've even
published a new ansible-4.8.0 RPM building tool there as well,
although I intensely dislike that oversized agglomeration of 135
distinct modules.

But since Ansible is now owned by Red Hat, it would seem disingenuous
to merley say "it's not part of RHEL". I pointed to it as an example
of what is happening at Red Hat recently, breaking working tools with
unexpected and unwelcome RPM re-arrangements. People like me can work
around them fairly easily, but it sows distrust of Red Hat software
suites.