On 02/19/2016 08:13 AM, Stephen John Smoogen wrote: > On 18 February 2016 at 19:16, ~Stack~ <[email protected]> wrote: >> On 02/18/2016 06:29 PM, Stephen John Smoogen wrote: >>> On 18 February 2016 at 14:13, ~Stack~ <[email protected]> wrote: >>>> On 02/18/2016 01:56 PM, Kevin Fenzi wrote: >>>>> On Tue, 16 Feb 2016 23:24:58 -0700 >>>>> Stephen John Smoogen <[email protected]> wrote: >>>> [snip] >>>>>> 1. Packages will never disappear. [They don't disappear from Fedora 12 >>>>>> even if it is archived.. ] >>>>> >>>>> To my understanding we never made this promise. We should try and >>>>> communicate why it's NOT something we promise. >>>> >>>> Could you elaborate on this please? I have asked before, but didn't >>>> really get an answer. I don't understand this. >>>> >>> >>> Software in EPEL follows many of the same rules as software in Fedora. >>> If there isn't an active maintainer the software is removed. This is >>> because a lot of people expect that the software is going to be >>> getting updates and bug fixes when it is there. If it isn't there it >>> is clear that it isn't getting any bug fixes. >>> >>> While as a user this is a major pain in the butt, on the other side >>> (maintainers and developers of the software) it is a major pain when >>> the opposite occurs. Developers get complaints about software they no >>> longer have any interest in and try to find someone to get rid of the >>> old software. People who are maintainers of other packages get long >>> hate emails about why is this software still in XYZ repository if no >>> one is going to care about it. It burnt out a lot of the early >>> repository people because they had made a package for someone at some >>> point but really didn't have any care for it to be there any longer >>> but all they were getting was crap for it being there. >> >> Thanks for replying. Makes sense. But what would the harm be to move a >> package into a separate "retired" repo? Community would know that it >> isn't maintained and yet the package wouldn't just disappear completely. >> I guess the difficult question would then be, how long is the package >> kept till it needs to be pruned? 1yr? 6mo? Still, it would be nice to >> give the user base the option to pull the packages they need out on a >> long enough scale that they have time to discover it with new builds. >> > > So every package ever signed is still in the koji build server if you > know where to look for it. However I am hoping next week to write up > some proposals that could accomplish this. > >> I also wonder how many people have been bit by this. I know I have >> supplied packages out of my repos for others before, but it has only >> been a handful. It seems to have bitten me several times in the last >> year and all were for EL6, but (fingers crossed) I am done with the EL6 >> boxes in <2yrs with a full migration to either EL7 or Ubuntu LTS and >> won't need the EL6 repo any more. :-) >> > > A lot of people have been bit as it is nearly a daily occurrence in > #epel on the irc server. > >> Thanks again! >> ~Stack~
My first comment is that I think we need to do better communication, as I don't think an announcement goes out to epel-users when a package is going to be retired. My proposal would be to: - When building against RHEL X.Y, the epel packages end up in epel/X.Y with a symbolic link of epel/X -> epel/X.Y. - The last two versions are in http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel, with older ones retired to http://archives.fedoraproject.org/pub/archive/epel -- Orion Poplawski Technical Manager 303-415-9701 x222 NWRA, Boulder/CoRA Office FAX: 303-415-9702 3380 Mitchell Lane [email protected] Boulder, CO 80301 http://www.nwra.com _______________________________________________ epel-devel mailing list [email protected] http://lists.fedoraproject.org/admin/lists/[email protected]
