On Thu, Jan 12, 2023 at 3:18 PM Gionatan Danti <g.danti at assyoma.it> wrote: > > Il 2023-01-12 16:10 Josh Boyer ha scritto: > > Modules are one of several packaging formats we have. With CentOS > > Stream 9/ RHEL 9, we took user and customer feedback on how the > > default versions of software are packaged and determined that the > > defaults should be normal RPMs. Newer and alternative versions of > > software will be delivered as modules in some cases, or as regular > > RPMs with applicable versioning in others. > > > > josh > > Hi Josh, > can I ask the rationale behind this decision? > > It seems "strange" to have some different version in the main repos, > with versioned RPMs, and other in specific modules (which needs to be > manually enabled). There have been many discussions on modularity, both on this list and on lists like the epel and fedora devel lists, but I'll give a brief subset. Modularity provides parallel availability but not parallel installatability. Some software needs or perhaps wants to be parallel installable. Also, some upstream language stacks such as python have implemented parallel availability/installability inherently in their framework, which eliminates the need for modules. Ultimately, the Red Hat teams are using modularity where they believe it makes sense and using regular packaging to reduce complexity for customers where it doesn't provide much benefit. josh