EPEL requesting updated status of Django package

[Jason Helfman]

Hi,

I was wondering if there are any efforts being made into getting the Django package updated for the epel repository?

Currently it is Django14, and we are running an application that requires at a minimum 15.

Any update is appreciated with any eta.

Thanks very much!

-jgh

[Matthias Runge]

On 01/08/2014 01:37 AM, Jason Helfman wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I was wondering if there are any efforts being made into getting the Django package updated for the epel repository?
>
> Currently it is Django14, and we are running an application that requires at a minimum 15.
>
> Any update is appreciated with any eta.
>
> Thanks very much!
>
> -jgh

Good question.

First of all, Django is a fast moving target, with a release in about
every 6-9 months; EPEL shouldn't move at all. Version upgrades are
deprecated during a release in general.

There used to be a Django package, which was Django-1.3. That version is
deprecated and the package is retired. What you currently get is
Django14, which we should consider as deprecated, too. Still we have a
huge bunch of packages depending on that version.

Options are:
- deprecate Django in general in EPEL and remove it, because we can not
upgrade software packages; we could provide it through Software collections
- make an exception and upgrade Django packages on a regular basis; this
might (will) break depending packages, which can't keep the pace of
Django itself. We even could decide, that we drop notorious broken packages
- introduce a new package Django15 (and probably Django16, too). That is
not ideal, too. Either we need to build every depending package for each
version, or the user has to know the right version and has to install
the right Django version manually. Not ideal either :-/
yum is apparently not smart enough to solve dependencies right.

Even in Fedora, which moves way faster than EPEL, we currently have
Django-1.5.x and not Django-1.6 because depending packages don't support
latest Django versions.

tl;dr There is currently no work being done, and I don't know a good
answer to that question. In any case, it will get messy.

Matthias