[OE-core] [PATCH 3/3] sanity: Add check for tar older than 1.28

[Richard Purdie]

On Thu, 2019-11-21 at 17:50 +0200, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 03:02:07PM +0000, Richard Purdie wrote:
> > Older versions break opkg-build when reproducible builds are
> > enabled.
> > Rather than trying to be selective based on which features are
> > enabled,
> > lets just make this a minimum version.
> > ...
> > +    if LooseVersion(version) < LooseVersion("1.28"):
> > +        return "Your version of tar is older than 1.28 and does
> > not have the support needed to enable reproducible builds. Please
> > install a newer version of tar.\n"
> > ...
> 
> How does "Please install a newer version of tar" work in practice
> on a supported host distribution like CentOS 7 ?
> 
> As user I would expect such things to just work when using
> a distribution that is documented as supported.

We're going to have to solve this issue on our autobuilder. Centos7
already causes problems and there is documetation in the manual about
it:

https://www.yoctoproject.org/docs/3.0/ref-manual/ref-manual.html#centos-packages

(and the need to use EPEL)

Unfortunately a newer tar isn't in EPEL.

I don't have a solution yet, I do know that silently creating empty
packages is much worst than telling a user something won't work though.

Any suggestions on how we fix it?

(We could make opkg-utils-native depend on tar-native but for most
people that isn't necessary so it seems a shame).

Cheers,

Richard