[side tags] Undesired automatic side-tag removal happened - how to deal with it in the future?
Hi all,
I maintain qpdf in Fedora, which recently got a new major release
version, which breaks compatibility with other packages, so I created a
side tag for other maintainers to use for building, and then releasing
it altogether in rawhide.
However the side tag:
f38-build-side-58658
got automatically deleted, even when it had builds connected to it
already. Documentation [1] does not mention any automatic side-tags
cleanup and its deadlines.
Although packagers can create a new side tag easily, I found it
inconvenient for maintainers, because the synchronization among the
maintainers can take weeks to finish the rebuild and release the update
and automatic removal without notice (do excuse me if I missed a
notification email about this - I have many filters and it could end up
somewhere where I wasn't able to find it) prolongs this process.
What I would like to propose are the following options:
A) don't do side-tag cleanups after a specific time frame, but only when
the specific event happens - branching, GA, EOL - it can be consuming to
our resources, but maintainer are still able to remove the side tags
manually in case it contains a big set of packages and AFAIK the process
itself is not such spread in usage...
or
B) do a side-tags cleanup and mention it in the documentation together
with specification what the removal's time frame is, so maintainers can
act accordingly
or
C) (my preferred) Koji or releng (depends on whether the cleanup
happened automatically or manually) will send an email to a side tag
creator with 'Hi, your side tag is going to expire - do you need it?' Or
with automaton - 'use this command to prolong it.' And if there is no
response or if the creator approves, remove the side tag.
WDYT?
Zdenek
[1] https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/rawhide-gating/multi-builds/
--
Zdenek Dohnal
Software Engineer
Red Hat, BRQ-TPBC