You have to use devtoolset-3 on your RHEL6 system to build the stack.

See https://developer.lsst.io/services/lsst-dev.html#select-appropriate-developer-tools for some instructions or https://pipelines.lsst.io/install/newinstall.html?highlight=devtoolset#source-install-redhat-legacy

devtoolset-3 comes with git 1.9.3.

Can we mark this as Won't Fix, if the documentation is already in the right place and we just hadn't pointed Eli Rykoff at it? Or are there modifications we need to make to the documentation to make this more clear?

If devtoolset-3 fixed the problem then I think we just close it. I'm waiting for Eli Rykoff to indicate what the current status is. I think we have a full set of documentation that tells you to use devtoolset-3 on RHEL6.

It did fix the problem. The documentation I saw about devtoolset-3 (which you helpfully pointed me to) is in the "newinstall.sh" section, but I (and others?) were told that the easiest way to get the stack is via lsstsw which doesn't have this information. I think a cross-link from lsstsw would be helpful (or, I guess, maybe I should've been told to use newinstall.sh instead?)

Ok. This has come up a couple of times. I'll adjust the title and assign mark it as a documentation ticket. All RHEL6 users have to install devtoolset-3 regardless of how they are doing the build and it seems there is some confusion over this. Currently it seems that newinstall users are told about it and lsst-dev users are told about it and C++ style guide readers are told about it. There is obviously no easy to find statement about the general issue of development environment.

I'll refactor the requirements section and include that content fully on both the lsstsw and newinstall installation pages, rather than just linking from one page to the other.

To be clear, the 'cross-link' was there all long (https://pipelines.lsst.io/install/lsstsw.html#prerequisites) but clearly this was a UX failure on my part.

It may be that including the words "eups distrib" in that link threw people off and if it just said "prerequisites" that would avoid confusion. Maybe a standalone prereqs pages would be better, linked from both.

A stand-alone pre-reqs page could be useful. One issue is that we don't want conda/docker/CernVM FS users to find the page and think it applies to their installations. There's a lot of UX improvements that can be made here, like using tab sheets to hide pre-req instructions for other platforms.

You're right, it is there. And I saw "eups distrib" and my brain went right past it.

Are we sure that devtoolset-3 is really the solution here?

[swinbank@tiger-sumire ~]$ cat /etc/redhat-release

Springdale Linux  release 6.8 (Pisa)

[swinbank@tiger-sumire ~]$ exec scl enable devtoolset-3 bash

[swinbank@tiger-sumire ~]$ which git

/usr/bin/git

[swinbank@tiger-sumire ~]$ git --version

git version 1.8.3.1

It may be that tiger-sumire is simply broken, but it's not obvious that devtoolset-3 provides an appropriate git.

Not sure at all. That's why I asked about it at the beginning of the ticket. Is there a RHEL6 channel for getting a git that supports https or do you have to build git from scratch?

You actually need not just devtoolset-3 but also git19 as shown on https://developer.lsst.io/services/lsst-dev.html#select-appropriate-developer-tools . Now, on the docs this is written as an optional, but it may be a requirement. (Certainly I needed to use git19 as well on my RHEL6 system).

That page claims that "the Developer Toolset includes version 1.9.3 of the Git version control system", which may or may not be true. If it is, then you shouldn't need git19 as well.

In short, while I definitely think that our documentation should be helpful, it looks as though somebody actually needs to understand what the various packages provide, rather than just shuffling the existing text around.

That is a good point. I don't believe that is true that the devtoolset-3 contains any particular version of git.

FYI, I now know why I didn't see the pre-reqs originally. The link I was sent to get started went here: https://developer.lsst.io/build-ci/lsstsw.html (which is also what you get as the top link if you google "lsstsw") but this is different from the "installation" entry-point here: https://pipelines.lsst.io/install/lsstsw.html

lsst-dev is a good test bed. If I enable devtoolset-3 I get git version 1.9.3 found in /opt/rh/devtoolset-3/root/usr/bin/git. No need to also enable git19.

The only thing I came up with on the list of what software is in devtoolset-3 is here: https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Developer_Toolset/3/pdf/User_Guide/Red_Hat_Developer_Toolset-3-User_Guide-en-US.pdf The only git mentions are Eclipse git plugins, and it's not part of my installation. So perhaps on lsst-dev they added git to the set for simplicity?

I'd be surprised if they hacked the devtoolset-3 package to include git. The git19 SCL is available on lsst-dev as well.

No, but apparently somebody did. I just spent too much time looking at this. It seems that lsst-dev grabs the devtoolset-3 from the (free as in beer) channel https://www.softwarecollections.org/repos/rhscl/devtoolset-3/epel-6-x86_64 which includes devtoolset-3-git. Here at SLAC we get the devtoolset-3 from our local mirror of the official (free as in speech, I suppose) RHEL channel, rhel-x86_64-server-6-rhscl, which does not include devtoolset-3-git. Looking at the official Red Hat source download (free as in speech and beer) site: http://ftp.redhat.com/redhat/linux/enterprise/6Server/en/RHSCL/SRPMS/ it also does not include devtoolset-3-git.

Therefore, official redhat customers will need to use the git19 package, while those using clones will not.

I don't know if there are any other missing/extra packages, but boy that is unpleasant.

Jonathan Sick Is this issue still valid as we've since migrated to devtoolset-6?

Same issue with devtoolset-6 which I have access to at SLAC.  That is, I need to do scl enable devtoolset-6 git19 tcsh in order to access the new/correct version of git.

we have:

https://developer.lsst.io/build-ci/platforms.html

and

https://developer.lsst.io/coding/cpp_style_guide.html#we-are-writing-c-14

in the dev guide but the pipelines install docs are still at v14.0 standard (https://pipelines.lsst.io/install/prereqs/centos.html?highlight=devtoolset) so don't mention devtoolset-6 (we need a "beta" version of those pages and I think that's another ticket somewhere.

Closing this since devtoolset is no longer needed.