Missing packages in EPEL-8, what can be done about that?

[LAHAYE Olivier]

Hi

I'm Main developper ofSystemImager a software that is aimed at image deployment on
cluster client nodes (and other computer by extension):
https://github.com/finley/SystemImager/wiki
https://github.com/finley/SystemImager/wiki/ScreenShots

It is based on dracut+plymouth for the imager and builds fine on most distro including
fedora-30.

Unfortunately, I've discovered with centos-8 that many (I really mean MANY) packages
have been dropped by redhat and epel as well.
redhat dropped docbook-utils-pdf for example (while keeping docbook-utils) which I rely on
to build the manual.

EPEL-8 has dropped xmlstarlet, perl-Qt and a few others which I deeply rely on.

My question is simple. What is the status of EPEL8? I mean is it incomplete and I
shouldn't worry about packages like xmlstarlet or perl-Qt missing as they will appear
anytime soon or did EPEL also dropped many packages like RHEL did for v8 and I’m stuck?

While I can understand that perl-Qt is not widely used or docbook-utils-pdf can be
replaced with some xml alternative (that I need to identify), I can’t believe that tools
like xmlstarlet will be unavailable to RHEL/CentOS v8 as AFAIK, there is no alternative to
manipulate/validate/transform xml files from command line. Did I missed something?

Best Regards,

--
Olivier LAHAYE