On Wednesday, September 1, 2021 5:32:06 PM CEST Florian Weimer wrote:
> * Josh Boyer:
> >> Gitlab has a repository aliasing mechanism. It could be a gradual
> >> transition for existing packages.
> >
> > No. This is extremely excessive. We already have namespaces, and the
> > list of reserved names is already known. Of that list, there is a
> > single one today that actually has an RPM that overlaps. Adding
> > content to RHEL is not a wild west process, so we can control what our
> > SRPMs are named as they are added going forward.
>
> Okay, so the prefix isn't going to fly. The “+” problem is also more
> widespread, and the prefix does not solve that at all.
>
> I checked the package addition process, and it actually flows through
> CentOS these days (“centpkg import” is used), so it should prevent the
> recurrence of the “tree” problem. Unlike other parts of the tooling,
> centpkg seems to know about the “+” rewriting (to “plus”), so that's not
> going to help us to prevent future mistakes in that area, though.
>
> What should we do here? We have a couple of packages that are basically
> impossible to maintain in the present state in CentOS Stream.
>
> One possible way forward could be:
>
> * Rename the tree package (starting with Fedora).
I have initiated the package rename request in Fedora:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/2001467
Kamil
> * Rename all packages with + in their names (also in Fedora).
> * Ban + in future source package names.
> * For every REPO, the RPM spec file must be called REPO.spec, and the
> source RPM name must be REPO.
>
> I'm not sure how good RPM is at source package renaming, though. If the
> repository name and the .spec file name and source package name differ
> (due to the “+” rewriting or the dump/restore thing), we end up with
> tooling issues again (like we had with dump/restore). If we rename the
> package outright, it affects the binary packages as well, and might need
> an exception at this point.
>
> My worry is that people have been saying “we'll deal with these few
> exceptions manually”, but as far as I can tell, that is just not what's
> happening. RPM components that should be trivially to maintain are
> suddenly very difficult.
>
> Thanks,
> Florian