[EPEL-devel] EPEL for z Systems s390x

[Peter Robinson]

Hi,

> I would like to suggest a great addition to the EPEL, the z Systems
> architecture (s390x).
> I have seem a great number of requests around EPEL for z Systems, its
> definitely a growing platform around Linux as IBM keeps offering better and
> more efficient servers that are basically a datacenter in a box - which is a
> great way for customers to reduce costs by consolidating Linux workloads.
> EPEL repository to s390x can be a great way to allow customers to try an
> unsupported package that still not available to RHEL on z Systems - that can
> in time mature, and can skip some of the processes to make into the RHEL for
> z Systems distro.

Thanks for the sales pitch... please check your sales hat at the EPEL door :)

Where is the "great number of requests" for EPEL for system-Z? Can you
quantify the demand?

> The idea is to offer more technology options (Fedora Packages) to customers
> using RHEL on z Systems - this can flag us what packages are customers
> really interested into for RHEL on z Systems that are still not available in
> the Enterprise distro.
> Please let’s brainstorm this suggestion here, IBMers, community members,
> Fedora members, RedHatter, you are all welcome to join this discussion.

So the concerns I have regarding this that I've not really yet seen
addressed on this thread are:
1) who's going to do this work? Setting up a new EPEL architecture
isn't an insignificant amount of work (like a new arch in Fedora).
There's an expectation of people to be around to assist in problems
with package builds etc
2) even with the free emulators mentioned in the thread how would
people test this on those. I don't believe there's CentOS for 390x yet
3) what RHEL releases do you expect to support?

Peter