How to deal with alternatives?

[leoluk]

How to handle alternatives?

In a minimal example that just depends on f37 binutils:

rpmtree(
    name = "sandbox",
    rpms = [
        "@binutils-0__2.38-25.fc37.x86_64//rpm",
    ],
    visibility = ["//visibility:public"],
)

.../usr/bin/ld ends up being the GOLD linker:

$ .bazeldnf/sandbox/default/root/bin/ld --version 
GNU gold (version 2.38-25.fc37) 1.16

In the binutils spec, BFD is the default through the alternatives mechanism: https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/binutils/blob/f36/f/binutils.spec#_455

A clean Fedora 37 container uses GNU ld by default even though binutils-gold is installed:

$ ld --version 
GNU ld version 2.38-25.fc37

How can I replicate this using bazeldnf?

[leoluk]

Our current workaround is to simply do it manually:

  # Manually resolve alternatives (https://github.com/rmohr/bazeldnf/issues/28)
  ln -r -s -f "${SANDBOX}/root/usr/bin/ld.bfd" "${SANDBOX}/root/usr/bin/ld"

[rmohr]

symlinks can be directly set on the rpmtree target like here: https://github.com/kubevirt/kubevirt/blob/a06915c634a6bc430dac02a8bc8bee048644bdcb/rpm/BUILD.bazel#L1377.