On Aug 13 01:25, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
I think that would be something with softwarecollections.org as that seems in line with their way of packaging items. I think that for some sorts of packages and libraries it makes sense for that, but I don't know if EPEL would mix and match like that. What I would like to do is the following:
We move from our moving distribution to a point release cycle with a disk layout like the following:
epel epel/development/ epel/development/5 epel/development/6 epel/development/7 epel/beta/5.12 epel/beta/6.7 epel/beta/7.1 epel/releases epel/releases/6.6 epel/releases/5.11 epel/releases/7.0 epel/updates epel/updates/6.6 epel/updates/5.11 epel/updates/7.0 epel/updates/testing/ epel/updates/testing/6.6 epel/updates/testing/5.11 epel/updates/testing/7.0
epel/development would be like the current EPEL directories but without the stringent requirements that packages are locked to a specific version for the lifetime of the overall RHEL release. Instead whenever RHEL releases a new dot release (7.0, 6.6, 5.11), EPEL would branch off the releases from development to beta/7.0 or beta/6.6 etc. Packages would be built against the point release and would need to be tested to get sufficient karma for 'release'. Once 6 weeks have passed from the RHEL point release, all packages which had gotten enough karma and that had completed repository trees would be put into epel/releases/6.6. Updates to that package would be put into updates/testing/6.6 and then promoted to updates/6.6 when enough karma had been given for an update. New packages which were added after the point release would show up in updates following the process Fedora does for new packages between point releases.
Later when 7.1, 6.7, 5.12 (or whatever they are called) comes out then the process is repeated which will make sure that packages that aren't needed enough to have sponsors will not be in EPEL and potentially broken and large updates are possible so if python34 is in 7.0 but python35 is ready for 7.2 it can replace it without problems (or similarly with ruby23 etc etc). Once the next point release is made ready, the old point release will be archived off to keep storage levels within reason.
I know that this proposal needs a lot more fleshing out, but I think it covers the use cases many users of EPEL need for long term usage of packages.
-- Stephen J Smoogen.
Were there plans made (at flock or elsewhere) for regular EPEL-related meetings? I would like to chip in and help where I can. I think this proposal strikes a happy medium between stability (within a point-release) and updated features.
-- Brian Stinson bstinson@ksu.edu | IRC: bstinson | Bitbucket/Twitter: bstinsonmhk