Removal of mingw-* packages from EPEL 7

[Richard W.M. Jones]

MinGW is a Windows cross compiler for Fedora.  There is a base
toolchain like mingw-filesystem and mingw-gcc, and many cross-compiled
libraries like mingw-glib2 which you can link with your programs to
make Windows binaries, all without needing to interact with Windows
itself.

The mingw-* packages are primarily developed in Fedora.  We added them
to EPEL 7 a long time ago, but they have been effectively unmaintained
for a really long time.  I don't know how to find out exactly when
they were branched, but a random sample of packages I looked at
haven't been updated in epel7/ since 2014(!), only shortly after RHEL
7 was released.  They therefore remain at very old versions with the
attendant problems that brings.

Therefore we would like to remove them from EPEL 7.

If this is going to cause a problem, then honestly the only way you'll
be able to save them is to step up to do the maintenance on them right
now.

I'm not very clear on the exact removal method, whether that is going
to be retirement, orphaning or even blocking them at the RCM level
from EPEL, but expect they'll go away unless someone very soon starts
to maintain them actively.

Note that some of these packages are in RHEL 8 CRB where they are used
to build various Windows programs that Red Hat ships, but none of them
are branched for EPEL 8 that I'm aware of.

More information in this thread:

https://pagure.io/fesco/issue/2333

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
Read my programming and virtualization blog: http://rwmj.wordpress.com
virt-builder quickly builds VMs from scratch
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[Troy Dawson]

On Thu, Jan 30, 2020 at 6:21 AM Richard W.M. Jones <rjones(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:
>  MinGW is a Windows cross compiler for Fedora.  There is a base
>  toolchain like mingw-filesystem and mingw-gcc, and many cross-compiled
>  libraries like mingw-glib2 which you can link with your programs to
>  make Windows binaries, all without needing to interact with Windows
>  itself.
>
>  The mingw-* packages are primarily developed in Fedora.  We added them
>  to EPEL 7 a long time ago, but they have been effectively unmaintained
>  for a really long time.  I don't know how to find out exactly when
>  they were branched, but a random sample of packages I looked at
>  haven't been updated in epel7/ since 2014(!), only shortly after RHEL
>  7 was released.  They therefore remain at very old versions with the
>  attendant problems that brings.
>
>  Therefore we would like to remove them from EPEL 7.
>
>  If this is going to cause a problem, then honestly the only way you'll
>  be able to save them is to step up to do the maintenance on them right
>  now.
>
>  I'm not very clear on the exact removal method, whether that is going
>  to be retirement, orphaning or even blocking them at the RCM level
>  from EPEL, but expect they'll go away unless someone very soon starts
>  to maintain them actively.
>
>  Note that some of these packages are in RHEL 8 CRB where they are used
>  to build various Windows programs that Red Hat ships, but none of them
>  are branched for EPEL 8 that I'm aware of.
>
>  More information in this thread:
>
>  https://pagure.io/fesco/issue/2333
>
>  Rich. 
Adding to that, a couple of the packages are un-installable from EPEL7.
It's only two, but on that bugzilla it was suggested that the packages
be removed.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1760979

Judging from the number of CVE's listed in the fesco issue, I suggest
archival and removal.
Troy

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On Thu, 30 Jan 2020 at 09:36, Troy Dawson <tdawson(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:
>  On Thu, Jan 30, 2020 at 6:21 AM Richard W.M. Jones <rjones(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:
>  >
>  > MinGW is a Windows cross compiler for Fedora.  There is a base
>  > toolchain like mingw-filesystem and mingw-gcc, and many cross-compiled
>  > libraries like mingw-glib2 which you can link with your programs to
>  > make Windows binaries, all without needing to interact with Windows
>  > itself.
>  >
>  > The mingw-* packages are primarily developed in Fedora.  We added them
>  > to EPEL 7 a long time ago, but they have been effectively unmaintained
>  > for a really long time.  I don't know how to find out exactly when
>  > they were branched, but a random sample of packages I looked at
>  > haven't been updated in epel7/ since 2014(!), only shortly after RHEL
>  > 7 was released.  They therefore remain at very old versions with the
>  > attendant problems that brings.
>  >
>  > Therefore we would like to remove them from EPEL 7.
>  >
>  > If this is going to cause a problem, then honestly the only way you'll
>  > be able to save them is to step up to do the maintenance on them right
>  > now.
>  >
>  > I'm not very clear on the exact removal method, whether that is going
>  > to be retirement, orphaning or even blocking them at the RCM level
>  > from EPEL, but expect they'll go away unless someone very soon starts
>  > to maintain them actively.
>  >
>  > Note that some of these packages are in RHEL 8 CRB where they are used
>  > to build various Windows programs that Red Hat ships, but none of them
>  > are branched for EPEL 8 that I'm aware of.
>  >
>  > More information in this thread:
>  >
>  > https://pagure.io/fesco/issue/2333
>  >
>  > Rich.
>
>  Adding to that, a couple of the packages are un-installable from EPEL7.
>  It's only two, but on that bugzilla it was suggested that the packages
>  be removed.
>  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1760979
>
>  Judging from the number of CVE's listed in the fesco issue, I suggest
>  archival and removal.
>  Troy 
Agreed



-- 
Stephen J Smoogen.

[Richard Shaw]

I agree. If you're actively developing for windows you should be running
Fedora not EL.

Thanks,
Richard