On Fri, Sep 20, 2013 at 2:23 PM, Dave Johansen <davejohansen@gmail.com> wrote:
> Part of the confusion may also come from the fact that the binaries
> generated by devtoolset are standalone and can be run on vanilla installs of
> RHEL 5/6 (i.e. without the devtoolset installed). So generally the
> devtoolset is only needed during build time, but since the ODB compiler is a
> plugin for gcc, the devtoolset is required for it's use when generated code
> for use with the runtime.
>
> In summary, the devtoolset requires the appropriate subscription from RH,
> but that is the point of my request. I would like to request that devtoolset
> be made available on Koji so it can be used to build certain packages. The
> idea is that then it will build the rpm on the server and it will be
> available in the EPEL (but not the devtoolset itself). This means that
> anyone who would want to use this package would need to have the devtoolset
> installed, so it doesn't violate any of the RH/EPEL policies, but would
> enable the use of the devtoolset with the EPEL.

As you indicated in the other thread, the devtoolset channel is only included in
developer RHEL subscriptions.  I'd presume the vast majority of EPEL consumers
have server-type subscriptions, so they wouldn't have access to it, correct?

That kind of sucks—there would be packages in EPEL that would have broken deps
for a lot of EPEL users and no real way of indicating to those users what the
problem is.  :-(

What about CentOS and Scientific Linux?  These are 100% fully supported targets
for EPEL [1] and cannot be ignored.  If they have no access to it, it shouldn't
be used in EPEL.  On the other hand, if most of those users have access to the
necessary dependencies, it might lessen the severity of lack of access to bona
fide RHEL users in some peoples' eyes.

In general, it seems your package is much more suited for a fedorapeople repo or
similar.  It doesn't seem to be generally useful to the vast majority of EPEL
consumers, just to users with a very limited set of RHEL subscriptions.  What's
the point of making something available in EPEL if the vast majority of EPEL
users can't use it?