Proposal: Ending PPC64 support for EPEL6 and EPEL7

[Stephen John Smoogen]

With Fedora soon to no longer build for the PPC64 platform, the ability for
EPEL to continue support of this platform is going to get much harder.

As such, it would be good to look at ending support for this platform in
our build system when RHEL-7.7 happens.

What could be done is the following:
0. Wait for RHEL-7.7beta
1. Email various lists about the plan.
2. Update the epel-release with a warning on PPC64 that the END of LIFE
will be happening and this platform will be moved to archives.
3. patch mirorrmanager for anything needed to do the below
4. At RHEL-7.7 release,
4a. archive off ppc64 data to /pub/archives/epel
4b. take out builders for ppc64
4c. make an epel-release which points ppc64 to /pub/archive links
4d. update mirrormanager for ppc64 links to go to /pub/archive
4e. retire content as needed

Please add to this ticket what we really should do as this is a very rough
plan and needs thought and planning.
https://pagure.io/epel/issue/5 https://pagure.io/epel/issue/587

[Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski]

On Friday, 10 May 2019 at 18:07, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
> With Fedora soon to no longer build for the PPC64 platform, the ability for
> EPEL to continue support of this platform is going to get much harder.

I assume that's because the builders are running Fedora. What if they
were rebuilt to run RHEL7?
> As such, it would be good to look at ending support for this platform in
> our build system when RHEL-7.7 happens.

Pity. I was hoping to keep my ppc64 VM at OpenPowerHub alive by
rebuilding it with RHEL7 instead of Fedora.

With ppc64 in EPEL we had at least one big-endian arch to build for
across both Fedora (s390x) and EPEL (ppc64). Now, we're going to lose
the latter.

Regards,
Dominik

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On Fri, 10 May 2019 at 16:22, Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski <
[e-mail]> wrote:
> On Friday, 10 May 2019 at 18:07, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
> > With Fedora soon to no longer build for the PPC64 platform, the ability
>
> for
> > EPEL to continue support of this platform is going to get much harder.
>
> I assume that's because the builders are running Fedora. What if they
> were rebuilt to run RHEL7?

The reason they are running Fedora was because various tools in the build
system require them to have newer utilities than were in RHEL+EPEL. Having
a set of RHEL7 builders means extra effort spent to backport tools.
> > As such, it would be good to look at ending support for this platform in
> > our build system when RHEL-7.7 happens.
>
> Pity. I was hoping to keep my ppc64 VM at OpenPowerHub alive by
> rebuilding it with RHEL7 instead of Fedora.

1. Nothing is going to stop you. You can copy down the ppc64 packages and
rebuild your EPEL packages there also.
2. This is just a proposal.  The issue is that we have only so many hours
in a day, are being asked to do more during those hours and to look for
anything we can drop to meet those goals.

This is not a zero cost on our side to keep this going, and its benefits
are currently to 90 systems versus 1.5 million systems (x86_64). If it is
important enough that we need to keep doing it, then we will have to find
something else to drop.
> With ppc64 in EPEL we had at least one big-endian arch to build for
> across both Fedora (s390x) and EPEL (ppc64). Now, we're going to lose
> the latter.

I think the writing on the wall for big-endian is getting bigger and bigger
these days. I would not be surprised if IBM came out with an S390le to put
the last nail in.
> Regards,
> Dominik
> --
> Fedora   https://getfedora.org  |  RPM Fusion  http://rpmfusion.org
> There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times and
> oppression to develop psychic muscles.
>         -- from "Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
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[Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski]

On Friday, 10 May 2019 at 23:06, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
[...]
> This is not a zero cost on our side to keep this going, and its benefits
> are currently to 90 systems versus 1.5 million systems (x86_64). If it is
> important enough that we need to keep doing it, then we will have to find
> something else to drop.

Are these numbers the number of unique IPs accessing EPEL repos?
If yes, the difference in magnitude is staggering and I have no
doubts it's not worth the effort to keep maintaining ppc64 builders
for such small user base.

Oh well. At least I managed to report quite a few endianness-related
bugs thanks to ppc64 support in Fedora. ;)

Regards,
Dominik

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On Fri, 10 May 2019 at 17:29, Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski <
[e-mail]> wrote:
> On Friday, 10 May 2019 at 23:06, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
> [...]
> > This is not a zero cost on our side to keep this going, and its benefits
> > are currently to 90 systems versus 1.5 million systems (x86_64). If it is
> > important enough that we need to keep doing it, then we will have to find
> > something else to drop.
>
> Are these numbers the number of unique IPs accessing EPEL repos?
> If yes, the difference in magnitude is staggering and I have no
> doubts it's not worth the effort to keep maintaining ppc64 builders
> for such small user base.

88 ppc64
217 ppc64le
38 659 x86_32
1 591 787 x86_64

are the average at least 1 checkin per unique ip address per day.
> Oh well. At least I managed to report quite a few endianness-related
> bugs thanks to ppc64 support in Fedora. ;)
>
> Regards,
> Dominik
> --
> Fedora   https://getfedora.org  |  RPM Fusion  http://rpmfusion.org
> There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times and
> oppression to develop psychic muscles.
>         -- from "Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
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