[EPEL] EPEL -- the way forward

[Thorsten Leemhuis]

Stephen John Smoogen schrieb:
>
> One of the things I have run into for needs for Extras for Enterprise
> at various sites is that there are three different camps you need to
> be able to satisfy.
> 
> Camp1 wants the same release for the lifetime of the product until it
> can no longer be patched. So if clamav-0.88.1 was what was released
> then they want patches backported until the end of the 7 years of
> support for say RHEL-4. So when 4.5.1 comes out, they want only things
> updated that have security updates and not API/ABI changes. Currently
> they will take FCL-3 for say RHEL-4 and use whatever is in that repo
> til time ends.
> 
> Camp2 wants general updates to match the quarterly release cycle. They
> dont want to upgrade every 4 days to the latest, but they want
> technology upgrades at regular times. So say clamav is the same for
> RHEL-4.5.0 but want 4.6.0 to have whatever is considered stable at
> that time. Currently they are taking a src.rpm from say FCL-5 and when
> FCL-6 comes out upgrading to what was in there. They will upgrade
> other stuff when it is needed.
> 
> Camp3 wants to get the latest stuff when it is available. They need it
> for whatever project and are basically wanting a 'barely-qa'd
> rawhide'. Currently they are taking Fedora rawhide and compiling it to
> meet daily/weekly needs.
> 
> One thing we need to figure out what we can afford to do. I think
> Camp3 is the easiest for volunteers to do.. and Camp2 has the largest
> number of people. Camp1 should be left to people who are going to be
> paid for it. It takes the most work and has the least 'reward'.

My 2 cent:

Agreed for Camp1 -- it should be left to people who are going to be paid
for it.

For the other stuff: I'm targeting something like a mix in the middle
between Camp2 and Camp3 (with some bits of Camp1 maybe) for EPEL (maybe
a bit more closer to Camp2 than Camp3). Always the latest stuff IMHO is
what we have Fedora for; I also think that's its unrealistic to even try
to always ship the latest apps: Just try now to build a certain apps
from Extras for RHEL4 -- you will run into trouble now and then, as
RHEL4 ships with gtk2-2.4, but there are quite a few apps these days
that require gtk2-2.6.

Cu
thl