[EPEL-devel] EPEL-8 plans and needed work

Yesterday, Red Hat announced its Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Beta, and so we would like to start getting ideas on what people expect for EPEL-8. First off, we are not going to be able to do this like we did with EPEL-5,6, or 7 because too much of the build infrastructure and tools have changed since 2013 when we last started planning for EPEL-7. Packages no longer have per branch permissions, packages can be ‘by themselves’ and also modules, and modules really need more than one packager to maintain run them. Plus we all know that there are points of pain in the current EPEL structure where packages go and come from the repository without much notice or planning. I would like to open the floor on how a beta program this time should be run and also how EPEL in the future should compose itself (currently we completely compose daily without an update tree or other tools) in the future. I would like any ideas to come with some proposals on how it could be implemented (can be hand-wavy), and I would like to ‘close’ debate on this by December 15th with a plan to have a beta ready to start building in January. As that may be a long delay for people who need openvpn and such, I would like to look also at standing up a mini-epel in /pub/alt which could be used to put packages in for users built using the methods we currently use. This area would also be where attempts to make EPEL-8 and anything else we do more modular would be done without affecting core EPEL until we are ready to make it happen. -- Stephen J Smoogen.