[EPEL-devel] inconsistent EPEL 5 repository

[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