[side tags] Undesired automatic side-tag removal happened - how to deal with it in the future?

[Zdenek Dohnal]

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