dnf reposync implicitly downloads src rpm in RHEL8

Solution In Progress - Updated -

Environment

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7, 8

Issue

In RHEL8, the dnf reposync ... --source command behaves differently from RHEL7 when downloading source packages *.src.rpm.
The *.src.rpm packages are downloaded regardless of the --source option.

Resolution

The observed behavior is not a bug, it is a changed behavior in RHEL8.
If the *.src.rpm packages are not required, they must be explicitly excluded using the --exclude option as the following example:

dnf reposync ... --exclude='*.src'

or

dnf reposync ... -x '*.src'

An example, how to exclude multiple package types:

dnf reposync ... --exclude='*.src,*.nosrc'

See man page:

man dnf | grep -A1 -- '-x '
       -x <package-file-spec>, --exclude=<package-file-spec>
              Exclude packages specified by <package-file-spec> from the operation.

Diagnostic Steps

Behavior of the dnf reposync ... --source command in the RHEL:

RHEL7

  • if the --source option is absent only binary RPMs get downloaded

  • if the --source option is present both binary and source RPMs get downloaded

RHEL8

  • if the --source option is absent both binary and source RPMs get downloaded

  • if the --source option is present only source RPMs get downloaded

  • Component
  • dnf

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