New subject: EPEL-ANNOUNCE EPEL-8 package requests are now open

1 Aug 2019


      I would like to thank everyone for their patience and for the people who
have put in a lot of work to get us to where we can start building
packages. The following is a general outline of what we have for packaging
procedures for EPEL-8. The master document is currently at
https://hackmd.io/@ssmoogen/B1p2QM-eS It will be stored with other EPEL
documents shortly.
# EPEL-8 Packaging Procedures
## Introduction
When a new Red Hat Enterprise Linux occurs, one of the steps to get EPEL
going for it is branching of various packages into new namespace. The EPEL
Steering Committee does not mass branch all existing packages into the
namespace because it has caused multiple problems:
1. The package maintainers did not want to support the package in the newer
version of EPEL. Package maintainers may only want to support certain
versions of Enterprise Linux or may want to wait until their favourite
derivative appears.
2. The package does not work in the latest version of RHEL. With multiple
years between releases, software which worked on Fedora 18 which would
branch to EPEL-7 may not exist anymore with Fedora 28 and EPEL-8 would need
a completely different version.
## Consumer request for packages
People who are interested in getting packages into EPEL should contact the
package maintainer through [bugzilla](https://bugzilla.redhat.com/). This
allows for the requests to be tracked and if the primary maintainer is not
interested in branching to EPEL, other ones can step in and do so.
## EPEL Playground
We have added an additional set of channels for EPEL-8 called playground.
It is meant to be sort of like Fedora Rawhide so that packagers can work on
versions of software which are too fast moving or will have large API
changes from what they are putting in the regular channel.
To try and make this transparent, we have made it so when a package is
built in epel8 it will normally also be built in epel8-playground. This is
done via a packages.cfg file which lists the targets for fedpkg to build
against. A successful package build will then go through 2 different paths:
* epel8 package will go into bodhi to be put into epel8-testing
* epel8-playground will bypass bodhi and go directly into epel8-playground
the next compose.
If a packager needs to focus only on epel8 or epel8-playground they can
edit packages.cfg to change the ```target= epel8 epel8-playground``` to
```target= epel8 ```.
Packages in epel8-playground are primarily to be used in the following
manner:
* To test out some new version of the package that might not be stable yet.
* To test out some new packaging of the package
* To test a major version change of the package that they want to land at
the next epel8 minor release.
* To build a package that will never be stable enough for epel8, but still
could be useful to some.
* At minor RHEL releases (ie, 8.1, 8.2) people can pull in big changes from
playground to the main epel8 packages. Since people will be upgrading and
paying more attention than usual anyhow at those points, it’s a great
chance to do that change, but also you want to make sure it’s panned out,
so you can test before hand in playground.
Consumers should be aware that packages in EPEL8-playground are there
without any Service Level Expectations. You may want to only cherry pick
packages from there as needed.
## Developer request for branching multiple packages
Branching is handled the same way as requesting a branch using `fedpkg
request-branch`. A maintainer can request an epel8 branch using `fedpkg
request-branch epel8` which will create a ticket in
https://pagure.io/releng/fedora-scm-requests/issues and Release Engineering
will process these requests.
To branch multiple packages please use this or a variant of this script:
```
#!/usr/bin/sh
# Reminder to get an updated pagure token for releng tickets
# Usage: epel-8.sh foo bar goo blah blech
if [ $# -lt 1 ]
then
    echo "At least one package name should be provided"
else
    TMPDIR=`mktemp -d /tmp/epel8.XXXXXX`
    pushd "$TMPDIR"
    for pkg in "$@"
    do
        fedpkg clone "$pkg"
        pushd "$pkg"
        fedpkg request-branch epel8
   fedpkg request-branch epel8-playground
        popd
    done
    rm -rfv "$TMPDIR"
fi
```
Releng will then work through the tickets in the system which is adding
branches to the PDC and src.fedoraproject.org.
## Known Issues
1. /usr/bin/python does not exist. Choose ``/usr/bin/python3`` or
``/usr/bin/python2`` and patch appropriately.
2. ``python2-sphinx`` is not shipped. Most packages should work with
python3-sphinx, and if it doesn't please open a bug. The python team has
been good about making fixes for this.
3. When branching python packages, be aware that python in EL-8 is python36
and not the version currently in rawhide. This has come up with a couple of
test packages where they assumed python37 or later.
4. ``systemd-rpm-macros`` is not a separate packages. If needed, used
``BuildRequires: systemd``
5. While EL-8 comes with platform-python, it should NOT be used in
``Requires:`` unless absolutely neccessary. python3 should be used instead.
(Exceptions can be made but will be rare and need justification.)
 **Accepted Exceptions:**
 * Use python3.6dist(coverage) instead of python3-coverage. This package is
not shipped but is needed in %check code.
6. Sometimes RHEL8 only has a python3 package for a dependency you need for
your build. (Example: python-bleach requires python2-html5lib, but RHEL8
provides only python3-html5lib). For EPEL-8.0 we only suggest one choice:
 * Choose not to have the python2 part of your package and patch whatever
to use python3.
7. Python2 packages are discouraged. RHEL-8 will contain python2.7 until
probably the end of life of RHEL-7. However support upstream will only be
minimal. When modularity occurs, we suggest that you make whatever python2
packages modules which can be pulled out when RHEL-8.N no longer has
python2.
8. While a RHEL src.rpm might produce a -devel package, it may not
currently be in the build repository. When running into this please open a
ticket with https://pagure.io/epel/new_issue for us to put in a request for
it to be added to Red Hat's Code Ready Builder. After modularity is
enabled, changes to what is done will be needed.
9. EPEL-8.0 may not work with the RHEL-8.1 beta. There seem to be changes
in dnf and zchunk which we have not worked out. This line will be updated.
10. You will need to make sure you have a version of fedpkg greater than
```fedpkg-1.37-4``` to work with both epel8 and epel8-playground. Versions
before that should work with just epel8.
## Definitions
1. Package maintainer. Person who has accepted responsibility to package
and maintain software in the Fedora Project ecosystem. The main packager is
usually someone focused on Fedora Linux, and secondary packagers may be
focused on particular use cases like EPEL.
2. Consumer. A person who has subscribed to EPEL for packages but is not a
maintainer.
3. PDC. Product Definition Center. A tool to help list the lifetime and
permissions that a product has so that branching and updates can be better
managed.
-- 
Stephen J Smoogen.