Devel repo Q&A

1. What is the Devel repo for?

We envision using the Devel repo for packages that are unshipped in CentOS Linux but needed for build-time dependencies of other packages. Devel is *NOT* meant to satisfy runtime dependencies or for long term use on general purpose machines.

2. How do I use the Devel repo?

You can enable the Devel repo by running:

dnf config-manager --enable devel

Reminder: this repo is *not* for general purpose use, and is only recommended for buildtime activities only.

3. How do I ask for an unshipped package to be included in Devel?

See FAQ/CentOS8/UnshippedPackages.

4. Why do you need to know what the -devel packages are used for?

We ask for that information to better understand the impact of not including them in a normal release artifact. This is an information gathering opportunity and is *not* for making inclusion/rejection judgements for Devel

5. Why isn't my package included yet?

We began with a small subset of requests to test our compose and delivery configs. We plan to close out bugs that are fixed with this push shortly, and then process the rest of the queue. Stay tuned to your open bugs if you have them.

6. Why not include *all* unshipped components in Devel?

One reason is that we want to gather impact information that we can communicate upstream.

More importantly, Red Hat has decided that these unshipped packages are lower in bugfix/update priority compared to the ones that made it into RHEL. In very limited cases, we may not see updates to such packages through the usual source-drop process, we need to maintain a list so that the CentOS team can monitor those packages more closely.