I'm working on a tool to make it easier to create EPEL branch
requests
in the case where there are transitive dependencies that also need to
be branched.
I'm basing it on
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Getting_a_Fedora_package_in_EPEL
which provides some guidelines and some templates; however, it is a bit
vague on some aspects, namely:
which product and component should the bug be filed against?
I've been using Fedora/rawhide (with the FutureFeature keyword) if the package
has never been branched for EPEL before, and 'Fedora EPEL' / epelX (where X is
the branch requested) if it has, however, I can't find a written document where
this is recommended, though I thought I've read it somewhere in the past.
If I can simply use Fedora/rawhide, this would simplify the tool a lot:
- we can almost always assume there is a {'product: 'Fedora',
'component': srpm}
with some rare exceptions e.g. the srpm is in base CentOS but has missing
subpackages (see recent discussion on the topic)
- if the package is branched for EPEL at some point, we can file the request
against {'product': 'Fedora EPEL', 'component': srpm}. But what
version to file
against?
- bpython:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1782782
phoronix-test-suite:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1976280
these are the ideal cases; the request is for an 'epel8' branch and
'epel7' and
'epel8' are listed as available versions, so the request was filed against
'epel8'
- nextcloud-client:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1972910
this is a request for 'epel8-next', but that is not available as a product
The tool will thus need to query Bugzilla to locate the component on either
Fedora EPEL or Fedora, and then figure out what versions are listed; from my
initial experimentation with python-bugzilla:
https://github.com/python-bugzilla/python-bugzilla
this does not seem trivial.
If filing against Fedora/rawhide is fine, I can edit the wiki to match. It should
probably also mention that the EPEL Packagers SIG group can be added as a co-maintainer,
but I'll experiment with the wording first when testing the tool.
The algorithm for filing bugs is complicated because there are Fedora
maintainers who do not want to deal with EPEL. If I were one of them I would
feel offended that I'm getting requests for EPEL 8 if there is already EPEL 7
maintainer.
I want to say you should bite the bullet and implement it in the complicated
way.
-- Petr