Zdenek Dohnal wrote on 2022/10/10 17:17:
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.
IMO basically side-tag is not expected to exist for such a long time, side-tag requester
should
take effort to merge it into main buildroot within, say, one week at most.
Even when side-tag buildroot exists, of source main buildroot evolves at the same time,
and as soname bump on another library can happen for example, when side-tag merge gets
delayed,
confusion is going to happen, e.g. R side-tag v.s. icu side-tag confusion which happened
about two months ago.
So if side-tag cannot be merged into main buildroot within some "reasonable"
period
(I would expect within two weeks at most), I want side-tag requester to once dispose it.
If rebuilding depdening packages are not ready, please create copr repository first,
check if depending packages are ready, and if not file a ticket on bugzilla or so,
and when it is ready to rebuild, then create side-tag.
Regards,
Mamoru