Release Notes 2.16

Released on 2021-12-16.

Mock-core-configs 36.4

The biggest change is the removal of epel-8-* configs. It has been replaced by several configs: alma+epel-8-*, centos+epel-8-*, oraclelinux+epel-8-*, rhel+epel-8-*, rocky+epel-8-*. Every config has its pros and cons:

alma+epel-8-* - This uses Alma Linux 8 + Fedora EPEL. It works right off the bat and it is recommended replacement. The only disadvantage is that Koji actually uses RHEL + EPEL for EPEL builds.
centos+epel-8-* - This uses CentOS 8 + Fedora EPEL. We do not recommend using this config, because CentOS 8 will reach EOL on December 31, 2021, and will be removed from mirrors on January 31, 2022.
oraclelinux+epel-8-* - This uses Oracle Linux 8 + Fedora EPEL.
rhel+epel-8-* - This uses RHEL 8 + Fedora EPEL. This is the configuration that Koji uses. But it requires some settings and RHEL subscriptions. As a developer, you can have 16 subscriptions for free.
rocky+epel-8-* - This uses Rocky Linux 8 + Fedora EPEL. It works right off the bat and it is recommended replacement. The only disadvantage is that Koji actually uses RHEL + EPEL for EPEL builds.

There were several options on how to handle EOL of epel-* configs and we asked EPEL Steering Committee to decide and they decided to remove epel-* config. So it is up to you to decide what to use.

Mock will ease it and if you try to build for epel-8-* config and this config does not exist, you will get this message:

$ mock -r epel-8-x86_64 --shell
ERROR: Could not find required config file: /etc/mock/epel-8-x86_64.cfg
ERROR: There are those alternatives:
ERROR:
ERROR: [1] alma+epel-8-x86_64
ERROR:     Use instead: mock -r alma+epel-8-x86_64 --shell
ERROR:     Builds against AlmaLinux 8 repositories, together with the official EPEL repositories.
ERROR:     Project page: https://almalinux.org/
ERROR:     Enable permanently by:
ERROR:     $ ln -s /etc/mock/alma+epel-8-x86_64.cfg /home/praiskup/.config/mock/epel-8-x86_64.cfg
ERROR:
ERROR: [2] centos+epel-8-x86_64
ERROR:     Use instead: mock -r centos+epel-8-x86_64 --shell
ERROR:     Builds against CentOS Linux 8 repositories, together with the official EPEL repositories.
ERROR:     This will reach end-of-life in January 2021.
ERROR:     Enable permanently by:
ERROR:     $ ln -s /etc/mock/centos+epel-8-x86_64.cfg /home/praiskup/.config/mock/epel-8-x86_64.cfg
ERROR:
ERROR: [3] rhel+epel-8-x86_64
ERROR:     Use instead: mock -r rhel+epel-8-x86_64 --shell
ERROR:     Builds against Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 repositories, together with the official EPEL repositories.
ERROR:     This mimics what is done in the official EPEL build system, but you need a Red Hat subscription:
ERROR:     https://rpm-software-management.github.io/mock/Feature-rhelchroots
ERROR:     Enable permanently by:
ERROR:     $ ln -s /etc/mock/rhel+epel-8-x86_64.cfg /home/praiskup/.config/mock/epel-8-x86_64.cfg
ERROR:
ERROR: [4] rocky+epel-8-x86_64
ERROR:     Use instead: mock -r rocky+epel-8-x86_64 --shell
ERROR:     Builds against Rocky Linux 8 repositories, together with the official EPEL repositories.
ERROR:     Project page: https://rockylinux.org/
ERROR:     Enable permanently by:
ERROR:     $ ln -s /etc/mock/rocky+epel-8-x86_64.cfg /home/praiskup/.config/mock/epel-8-x86_64.cfg

Additional changes are:

Fedora 33 configs were moved to eol/ directory
EOLed EPEL Playground configs, per EPEL Steering Committee decision
Added configs for CentOS Stream 9 + EPEL Next 9
We expanded dnf_vars which cause an issue on EL7 hosts RHBZ#2026571
Added compatibility symlinks for EPEL 7 to centos+epel-7-*
Resolved the multiple “local” repo problems
Dropped rhel+epel-8-ppc64 config
Added rhel+epel-8-s390x config
Added navy-8-x86_64 config
Reduced packages installed in EPEL chroots

Mock 2.16 changes:

Mock got a new configuration option:

config_opts["no-config"]["epel-8"] = {}
config_opts["no-config"]["epel-8"]["alternatives"] = {
    "alma+epel-8": {
        "description": [
            "Builds against AlmaLinux 8 repositories, "
            "together with the official EPEL repositories.",
            "Project page: https://almalinux.org/"
        ],
    }
    }

When the configuration file for epel-8-* does not exist, it will print the text from the description field. There is new file /etc/mock/chroot-aliases.cfg which contains defaults, but you can add your own option in your user config.

There was one issue with BSD Tar, which has been resolved [GH#820]
There is new option ssl_extra_certs [GH#801]
```
config_opts['ssl_extra_certs'] = ['/etc/pki/tls/certs/client.crt', '/etc/pki/tls/certs/',
                                  '/etc/pki/tls/private/client_nopass.key.crt', '/etc/pki/tls/private/']
#config_opts['ssl_extra_certs'] = ['/path/on/host', '/path/in/mock/chroot',
#                                  '/path/on/host2', '/path/in/mock/chroot2', ... ]
```
It copies the host’s SSL certificates into a specified location inside the chroot if mock needs access to repositories requiring client certificate authentication. Specify the full path to the public certificate on the host and the destination directory in the chroot. Do the same for the private key. The private key should not be password-protected if you want Mock to run unattended.
For the “bootstrap_image” feature, we use podman run command to install dnf stack into the bootstrap container. Prevously we cleaned-up the environment for the Podman process which in turn caused DNF installation problems on EL8 (issue 831)
We disabled seccomp filtering in --isolation=nspawn (the default). This has been done to avoid build failures on hosts with stricter filters than on the target chroot (issue 811)
Note this is the last 2.x release made from the main branch. After this release, we will create a new branch, and future 2.x versions will get only important bug fixes and important changes to the config.

A version in main will be 3.x and will stop supporting EL7 as build host. This will allow us to get rid of some compatibility code. However, we will still support building for EL7.

We plan to build 3.x for all supported Fedora versions and EPEL 8+. EPEL 7 will stay on 2.x version.

Currently known issues:

On Fedora 35+, there are problems with the nosync.so plugin. Please, to avoid the problems, temporarily disable the nosync.so plugin.
The subscription-manager plugins breaks the DNF stack on Fedora, so when installed even the normal DNF operations don’t work. Updated packages (not yet in Bodhi updates) help, see the workaround.

Following contributors contributed to this release:

Adil Hussain
Carl George
Daniel Berteaud
Istiak Ferdous
Justin Vreeland
Louis Abel
Miroslav Suchý
Neal Gompa
Patrick Laimbock
Pavel Raiskup

Thank you.

Mock » Release Notes 2.16

A 'simple' chroot build environment manager for building RPMs.

Mock-core-configs 36.4

Mock 2.16 changes:

Currently known issues: