On Thu, Jan 30, 2020 at 6:21 AM Richard W.M. Jones <rjones(a)redhat.com> 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