[Missing Documentation] - Package source code

[rillian]

What topic is missing from the current Amazon Linux 2022 documentation? Please be specific.

I'd like to have easier access to the source code for packages.

This is useful for a variety of reasons: checking how a project or its dependencies are deployed, verifying configurations for user support, or simplifying fixes. Sources to specific packages are available as srpm downloads within a running Amazon Linux image, but this can be tedious to retrieve.

It would be good to have direct links from the package index sections in the documentation, for example the release notes and support statement pages. Ideally this would be a public repository, like src.fedoraproject.org provides for each package, since this makes it easy to compare versions, but a simple direct link to a source archive would be ok.

[stewartsmith]

At the very least we should look at adding:

• instructions for using yumdownloader on other OSs (such as Fedora) to grab SRPMs for AL2022.
• A link to download the SRPM directly

Having a src.fedoraproject.org equivalent for Amazon Linux is a few more steps for us and is a longer-term project to look at.

[brandt]

An open directory listing of SRPMs like Fedora's archives server would be a nice, easy stopgap solution.

Example: https://archives.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/35/Server/source/tree/Packages/