> On Thu, Feb 25, 2021 at 7:31 AM Stephen John Smoogen <smooge at gmail.com> > wrote: > >> On Thu, 25 Feb 2021 at 02:11, Simon Matter <simon.matter at invoca.ch> >> wrote: >> >> > >> >> > >> Smooge, you know I feel your pain, but becoming a maintainer in >> EPEL >> has >> > >> a pretty high bar (lots of new tools and methods to work with, >> amongst >> > >> other things) -- as it SHOULD, given that it's intended as an addon >> to >> > >> EL and needs to be very tightly controlled. It's just more >> difficult >> to >> > >> get started these days relative to when anyone could build an rpm >> as >> > >> long as they had a copy of Maximum RPM and knew how to drive 'rpm >> -ba' >> > >> .... back when building as root in a non-reproducible buildroot >> wasn't a >> > >> cardinal sin..... >> > >> >> > > >> > > Not that it matters .. BUT .. EL8 is much harder to build for. >> There >> > > are modular components, not all the Devel files exist, etc. >> > > >> > > It is much harder than EL7. >> > >> > Thanks Johnny for reminding. I was wondering why the situation for EL8 >> is >> > so much worse than for EL7 and that was true before CentOS Stream came >> up. >> > >> > In the end I have never been happy with the new modules system and how >> it >> > makes packaging much more difficult than it was and than it should be. >> > >> > IMHO the hurdles to build high quality packages should be as simple as >> > possible but the difficulties to do so went in the wrong direction. >> The >> > result we see now. Today we have an unstable distribution (Fedora) >> with a >> > quite good and comprehensive package set, and we have stable (EL) with >> an >> > unstable and lacking package set. >> > >> > >> Even without modules (A person wrote a program which undid some of those >> problems for us in EPEL), EL8 is not easy to build. Packages and >> software >> themselves have gotten more interdependent and complex. This leads to a >> larger and larger chain of 'buildrequires' and 'requires' for each >> package. >> To get some of the XFCE packages into EPEL you need to bring into EPEL >> all >> kinds of quaternary packages so you can build the tertiary packages >> which >> are needed for the secondary packages which allow you to get something >> like >> xfce4-cpufreq-plugin-1.2.1-7.fc33.src.rpm built. Each of those packages >> needs a maintainer who wants to deal with them in EPEL which requires >> them >> to run an EL to test. >> >> I tried an experiment during the RHEL-8 beta to see what it would take >> to >> get EPEL-8 1:1 with EPEL-7.. I gave up after adding nearly a thousand >> packages to the 'build chain' which were not in EPEL-7 nor even in the >> RHEL-8 beta or its 'buildroot'. These were mainly packages that are in >> Fedora already and would need to be maintained in EPEL and no one wants >> to >> do that. >> >> This was supposed to be a problem modularity was to fix.. so you need >> 100 >> packages not in EPEL for your 1 application set, and you don't want to >> maintain those extra packages? Just put them inside your module build >> chain >> and deliver what you wanted. Of course that is still a monumental task >> and >> most packagers would say 'meh I got better things to do, like do a root >> canal without anesthesia.' >> >> >> >> > Simon >> > >> > _______________________________________________ >> > CentOS mailing list >> > CentOS at centos.org >> > https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos >> > >> >> >> -- >> Stephen J Smoogen. >> _______________________________________________ >> CentOS mailing list >> CentOS at centos.org >> https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos > > > Does package building for debian and derivatives not run into this same > issue of interdependency? Is it because they have more packages to begin > with? > Not judging, I'm curious. > > Tony Schreiner Both Debian and Fedora have a much larger package base and try to keep those alive step by step. EL on the other side has a very limited, supported package set and therefore a lot of packages needed to build a lot of packages are just missing. It's my impression that most development power goes into the limited base system and cloud, container and all the newer fancy stuff. Simon