I have been thinking about proposing a Change to Fedora 39, which would disable yum modular repos by default in installs. I thought I would float the idea here first. I suspect the vast majority of Fedora users don't use the modular repos, so I don't see the point of enabling them by default anymore. Does this make sense?

On Tue, May 9, 2023 at 12:32 AM Jens-Ulrik Petersen <petersen(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote: > > I have been thinking about proposing a Change to Fedora 39, > which would disable yum modular repos by default in installs. > I thought I would float the idea here first. > > I suspect the vast majority of Fedora users don't use > the modular repos, so I don't see the point of enabling > them by default anymore. Does this make sense? > > I know dnf5 is coming with performance improvements > but I still think turning off the modular repos would speed up dnf > and save users a lot of time. > I'm okay with this. The only case I had for using modular repos was Nodejs, but that is demodularizing now. > > ps I think it would be a good idea to disable the cisco-h264 repo too by default in the fedora container image, and maybe also for headless Fedora editions. Please don't do this, as ffmpeg will pull the codec in if available, and there are tons of headless use-cases for ffmpeg that make the availability of this codec useful. It's also a really tiny repository anyway...

I measured cached "dnf upgrade" (i.e. DNF4) on rawhide without and with the modular repository 5 times and the times are 1.022 vs. 1.090 seconds. I.e. 6.2% speedup.

I suspect the vast majority of Fedora users don't use the modular repos, so I don't see the point of enabling them by default anymore. Does this make sense?

ps I think it would be a good idea to disable the cisco-h264 repo too by default in the fedora container image, and maybe also for headless Fedora editions.

Thanks for all the helpful comments and feedback, though more is still welcome of course. So I am leaning now towards not installing fedora-repos-modular by default (rather than disabling the modular repos by default): also for upgrade compatibility. I have started a Change proposal draft, which I think should be ready soon, with current working title *"Turn off modular dnf repos by default"*. Perhaps *"No default fedora-repos-modular"* would be more precise. Or any better suggestions (that don't sound like modularity is being removed)?

I think the actual work (PR's) required is not huge, but if someone is particularly keen to join the effort let me know.

> "No fedora-repos-modular in default installation" ? I feel that's a better way than disabling (enabled=0) module repos by default.

Am 10.05.2023 um 18:45 schrieb Kevin Fenzi <kevin(a)scrye.com&gt;: On Wed, May 10, 2023 at 12:21:51PM +0800, Jens-Ulrik Petersen wrote: > Thanks for all the helpful comments and feedback, > though more is still welcome of course. > So I am leaning now towards not installing fedora-repos-modular by default > (rather than disabling the modular repos by default): also for upgrade > compatibility. > > I have started a Change proposal draft, which I think should be ready soon, > with current working title *"Turn off modular dnf repos by default"*. > Perhaps *"No default fedora-repos-modular"* would be more precise. > Or any better suggestions (that don't sound like modularity is being > removed)? > > I think the actual work (PR's) required is not huge, > but if someone is particularly keen to join the effort let me know. So, at the risk of opening a larger can of worms...and increasing the scope here beyond what you have any desire to do... Should we consider just retiring modular repos entirely? I do know there's a number of active module builds, but I am not sure how much users use them. While RHEL still uses modules, EPEL has retired their epel8 modular repos. Can the things using modules now switch to compat packages in the main repository? I realize we may want to just say 'no, not now' here, but I thought I would bring it up.

> Am 10.05.2023 um 18:45 schrieb Kevin Fenzi <kevin(a)scrye.com&gt;: > > On Wed, May 10, 2023 at 12:21:51PM +0800, Jens-Ulrik Petersen wrote: >> Thanks for all the helpful comments and feedback, >> though more is still welcome of course. >> So I am leaning now towards not installing fedora-repos-modular by default >> (rather than disabling the modular repos by default): also for upgrade >> compatibility. >> >> I have started a Change proposal draft, which I think should be ready soon, >> with current working title *"Turn off modular dnf repos by default"*. >> Perhaps *"No default fedora-repos-modular"* would be more precise. >> Or any better suggestions (that don't sound like modularity is being >> removed)? >> >> I think the actual work (PR's) required is not huge, >> but if someone is particularly keen to join the effort let me know. > > So, at the risk of opening a larger can of worms...and increasing the > scope here beyond what you have any desire to do... > > Should we consider just retiring modular repos entirely? > > I do know there's a number of active module builds, but I am not sure > how much users use them. While RHEL still uses modules, EPEL has retired > their epel8 modular repos. > > Can the things using modules now switch to compat packages in the main > repository? > > I realize we may want to just say 'no, not now' here, but I thought I > would bring it up. I suppose I would belong to the latter. From a Server admin’s POV the modules are a great chance to keep some backwards compatibility with our fast pacing distro. The most prominent example is PostgreSQL. It is not so rare that the new major version requires an adjustment in the application programme or at least an extensive test. And every major update also requires a migration of the entire data stock. Modularisation is a welcome opportunity to quickly switch to a new release and use new capabilities, but to carry out the adaptation / tests with PostgreSQL at your leisure. And that is just one example. Another example is changes in languages such as Ruby, where application programmes sometimes cannot keep up with the changes. Same is true for httpd or tomcat - just some other examples. If we could manage compat packages or parallel use of different major versions (as, for example, the Java runtime environment has managed to provide perfectly for decades), then modularisation would probably no longer be needed.

Should we consider just retiring modular repos entirely? I do know there's a number of active module builds, but I am not sure how much users use them. While RHEL still uses modules, EPEL has retired their epel8 modular repos.

Can the things using modules now switch to compat packages in the main repository?

On Tue, 2023-05-09 at 12:31 +0800, Jens-Ulrik Petersen wrote: If we do decide to disable the fedora-cisco-openh264 repository on the base fedora OCI image, then we might have to enable it separately for the fedora-toolbox images, because the OpenH264 codec is something that applications running inside the container might want to use.