Ubuntu install libyaml-dev

[MSP-Greg]

Tool name

libyaml-dev

Tool license

apt package

Add or update?

• Add
• Update

Desired version

na - use current Ubuntu pacakge

Approximate size

small

Brief description of tool

Ubuntu has libyaml installed (automatic), but not libyaml-dev. I believe macOS has it installed, as it does have libyaml header files, etc.

Ignoring Windows, as it depends on the build system in use.

Reason for the request is Ruby's yaml package (psych) previously vendored libyaml code. With the new release that was removed. It's a package that is a dependency for many popular Ruby gems, and now CI is failing on Ubuntu, but fine on macOS. It seems reasonable to ask for parity between the two...

URL for tool's homepage

No response

Provide a basic test case to validate the tool's functionality.

apt install libyaml-dev

Platforms where you need the tool

• Azure DevOps
• GitHub Actions

Runner images where you need the tool

• Ubuntu 18.04
• Ubuntu 20.04
• Ubuntu 22.04
• macOS 10.15
• macOS 11
• macOS 12
• Windows Server 2019
• Windows Server 2022

Can this tool be installed during the build?

Yes.

Tool installation time in runtime

quick

Are you willing to submit a PR?

not sure if there is a generic 'install these apt packages' list

[erik-bershel]

Hi @MSP-Greg!
We'll take a closer look and return with decision a bit later.

[MSP-Greg]

@erik-bershel

I've been involved in with setup-ruby since its inception. I've also been involved in the Windows code it uses, which does install a full set of build tools and/or packages (MSYS2 mingw, ucrt, or msft/vcpkg), so we do install/update build systems in its code. The code also caches all the packages in GitHub releases, so it's not hammering external package servers.

We've never needed to do so with Ubuntu or macOS, and most Ruby CI probably has more Ubuntu & macOS jobs than Windows.

Summing up, after looking at all the practical aspects of this issue, adding it to the images seems like the best solution.

[eregon]

To give a bit more context, this is coming from ruby/setup-ruby#409
Here is a summary:
Ruby added a dependency on libyaml and the psych gem (part of Ruby) added a dependency libyaml-dev (the headers), due to no longer vendoring libyaml in psych.
This means a large number of Ruby-related workflows started to fail when installing the psych gem (which is a frequent transitive dependency) since psych 5 was released with that change.

So it would be nice and useful if runner images include libyaml-dev to avoid many many workflows to have to be updated to sudo apt install libyaml-dev on Ubuntu.
It's just a few headers, about ~250 KB installed (from https://packages.debian.org/stretch/libyaml-dev).

Tool installation time in runtime

Actually it's something like 15s so it's non-trivial overhead (it's ~3x slower than downloading and setting up Ruby to give an idea).

[mikhailkoliada]

will be deployed next week

[mikhailkoliada]

Deployed