This is a proposal. It's mainly writing down what I think most of us
agreed on at last weeks EPEL Steering Committee meeting. Feel free to
continue to discuss and/or have ideas.
I've been asked by a couple places what the plans were, so I'm writing it here.
Overall Plan:
- epel-next is an epel branch that is built against CentOS Stream. epel-next
only has the packages that would be incompatible with released RHEL
builds, or if an EPEL maintainer is updating a package that will only
be released to regular EPEL at the next RHEL release.
- We plan on creating epel9-next when CentOS 9 Stream has a public
repository. We plan on using the EPEL Packaging SIG to populate it
early with common packages, although any EPEL package maintainers can
add their packages whenever they want.
- We plan on creating normal EPEL9 after the RHEL 9.0 GA release, just
like normal. No sooner. All epel9-next packages will be rebuilt on
EPEL9. They will not be "tagged over". This rebuild should be by whoever
built it in epel9-next.
Approximate Timelines:
- All of these timelines depend on (A) CentOS 9 Stream / RHEL9 actual dates
and (B) availability of EPEL volunteers. Please note, EPEL is
completely volunteers, and sometimes "day jobs" make EPEL timelines slip.
- epel9-next - July 2021
-- CentOS 9 Stream should have a public repository in April 2021
-- Should take about 3 months to setup
- epel9 - October 2022
-- RHEL 9.0 should be released around May 2022
-- Should take about 5 months to setup
-- Note: It takes longer because it has to deal with getting packages
from an internal RHEL repo and all the complications of doing that.
EPEL Packaging SIG
- We hope to utilize the EPEL Packaging SIG as much as possible.
- This might be as simple as having them rebuild a epel9-next package
on epel9, or possibly maintaining a package when the Fedora packager
does not want to do EPEL.
- More details will be coming, but we hope the SIG will help get alot
of the most used EPEL packages into EPEL9 as soon as possible.
Troy Dawson