inconsistent EPEL 5 repository

[Cristina Aiftimiei]

Dear all,

I understood that there is now, or it was since log time, but it is
enforced in the last months, a procedure of retireing obsoleted,
unmaintained packages. Nothing against it, just that the way it is applied
creates problems. Most probably it is because maintainers are not having a
look at the e-mails with the subject "Orphaned packages in epelX".

We have now a situation like this:
- one of our packages uses "python-daemon"-
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/package/python-daemon/. As you see it
is supported on all OSes, in particular it is supported on EPEL5
- python-daemon depends on "python-lockfile" -
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/package/python-lockfile/
and
"2015-01-23: Retired orphaned package, because it was orphaned for more
than six weeks.
Reference: https://fedorahosted.org/epel/ticket/7"
And from here you arrive to our problem - we are not able to install our
middleware because:
--> Running transaction check
--> Processing Dependency: python-daemon for package: apel-ssm
--> Running transaction check
---> Package python-daemon.noarch 0:1.5.2-3.el5 set to be updated
--> Processing Dependency: python-lockfile for package: python-daemon
--> Finished Dependency Resolution
python-daemon-1.5.2-3.el5.noarch from epel has depsolving problems
  --> Missing Dependency: python-lockfile is needed by package
python-daemon-1.5.2-3.el5.noarch (epel)

Our packages were not changed or build latelly, and even if they were we
couldn't see the issue as the dependecy is on python-daemon and it is only
at runtime.

We have the same issue with:
"python-twisted-web-0.7.0-1.el5.x86_64 from epel has depsolving problems
--> Missing Dependency: SOAPpy is needed by package
python-twisted-web-0.7.0-1.el5.x86_64 (epel) Beginning Kernel Module Plugin
Finished Kernel Module Plugin Error: Missing Dependency: SOAPpy is needed
by package python-twisted-web-0.7.0-1.el5.x86_64 (epel)"

Is there anything that we, you can do?

Thank you very much,
Cristina

[Till Maas]

On Fri, Feb 06, 2015 at 04:12:18PM +0100, Cristina Aiftimiei wrote:
> I understood that there is now, or it was since log time, but it is
> enforced in the last months, a procedure of retireing obsoleted,
> unmaintained packages. Nothing against it, just that the way it is applied
> creates problems. Most probably it is because maintainers are not having a
> look at the e-mails with the subject "Orphaned packages in epelX".

It might also be the case that too many maintainers abandoned EPEL 5 or
do not have any interest in it. For some python packages, maintainers
also did not understand that their package is really affected.
> Our packages were not changed or build latelly, and even if they were we
> couldn't see the issue as the dependecy is on python-daemon and it is only
> at runtime.

You can run on
https://github.com/tyll/fedora_support_status
on (test) systems that contain the packages that you need to identify
problematic packages, but is this currently just a proof-of-concept
script.
> We have the same issue with:
> "python-twisted-web-0.7.0-1.el5.x86_64 from epel has depsolving problems
> --> Missing Dependency: SOAPpy is needed by package
> python-twisted-web-0.7.0-1.el5.x86_64 (epel) Beginning Kernel Module Plugin
> Finished Kernel Module Plugin Error: Missing Dependency: SOAPpy is needed
> by package python-twisted-web-0.7.0-1.el5.x86_64 (epel)"

SOAPpy was unretired by Mattias Ellert. Therefore it will soon be
available in epel5-testing and then stable.
> Is there anything that we, you can do?

If you are or know package maintainers or are interested into it, you
can step up and maintain the packages that are retired (or depend on
retired packages). It is probably not a very time consuming effort for
EPEL5 where the main task is to be reachable in case a bug report comes
in, but I guess there will not be that many.

Btw. packages with broken dependencies will also be removed soon from
EPEL, unless the dependencies are fixed. Since some core packages were
also affected the last time I checked and due to FOSDEM and devconf I
did not have much time to look into it, it was deferred.

If you have further questions, feel free to ask. If you need assistance
to get people set-up to help with maintaining packages in EPEL, you will
also find help here.

Regards
Till

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On 6 February 2015 at 08:12, Cristina Aiftimiei  wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> I understood that there is now, or it was since log time, but it is
> enforced in the last months, a procedure of retireing obsoleted,
> unmaintained packages. Nothing against it, just that the way it is applied
> creates problems. Most probably it is because maintainers are not having a
> look at the e-mails with the subject "Orphaned packages in epelX".

Hi,

Do you have a suggestion on a better title for emails? We are trying to get
as much attention on this with comaintainers on packages also getting
direct emails.
> We have now a situation like this:
> one of our packages uses "python-daemon"-
>
> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/package/python-daemon/. As you see
> it is supported on all OSes, in particular it is supported on EPEL5
> python-daemon depends on "python-lockfile" -
>
> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/package/python-lockfile/
> and
> "2015-01-23: Retired orphaned package, because it was orphaned for more
> than six weeks.
> Reference: https://fedorahosted.org/epel/ticket/7"
> And from here you arrive to our problem - we are not able to install our
> middleware because:
> --> Running transaction check
> --> Processing Dependency: python-daemon for package: apel-ssm
> --> Running transaction check
> ---> Package python-daemon.noarch 0:1.5.2-3.el5 set to be updated
> --> Processing Dependency: python-lockfile for package: python-daemon
> --> Finished Dependency Resolution
> python-daemon-1.5.2-3.el5.noarch from epel has depsolving problems
>   --> Missing Dependency: python-lockfile is needed by package
> python-daemon-1.5.2-3.el5.noarch (epel)
>
> Our packages were not changed or build latelly, and even if they were we
> couldn't see the issue as the dependecy is on python-daemon and it is only
> at runtime.
>
> We have the same issue with:
> "python-twisted-web-0.7.0-1.el5.x86_64 from epel has depsolving problems
> --> Missing Dependency: SOAPpy is needed by package
> python-twisted-web-0.7.0-1.el5.x86_64 (epel) Beginning Kernel Module Plugin
> Finished Kernel Module Plugin Error: Missing Dependency: SOAPpy is needed
> by package python-twisted-web-0.7.0-1.el5.x86_64 (epel)"
>
> Is there anything that we, you can do?

There isn't much we can do beyond asking someone to take maintenance of
these packages.  We are a volunteer organization and have to rely on people
who need things to do some of the work so that everyone can benefit. If you
or someone on your team can work on maintaining those packages in the trees
you want that would be great.
> Thank you very much,
> Cristina
>
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