On Wed, Jan 4, 2012 at 1:55 AM, Manuel Wolfshant <wolfy@nobugconsulting.ro> wrote:

On 01/04/2012 07:21 AM, Michael Stahnke wrote:

So, we have about 60 days until EL4 goes to End of Life from Red Hat[1] (and thus triggering CentOS, and I imagine Oracle, Scientific et al).

What are the plans for EPEL 4?

The way I see we have a few options:

1. We stop putting new content in EPEL4 and take down the EPEL mirror (thus really end-of-lifeing EPEL 4)
2. We stop putting in new content, and leave the mirrors, thus allowing those who haven't migrated to ahve some sort of package options, with no option for updates
3. We keep allow people to add content to EPEL4 due to things like extended support
4. Some other option I haven't though about yet.

I am for a combination of 2 and 3. I am 100% sure that even after RHEL4 goes end of life, many functional systems that are now running on RHEL4 will be preserved, even if there would be no new deployments. I see no reason to force them to stop using EPEL [*].
OTOH I do agree with Toshi's idea to migrate the repository to archives.f.o and allowing the public mirrors to opt-out.

I like the archives proposal as well.

I like 1 the best, because it only helps enforce lifecycle planning. And when I worked in big enterprise, I needed all the help I could get to be able to move systems. :)

Help as in "look, I want you to migrate, here is an argument you can use to convince your management and all the people who provide software for you: I'll cut access to the optional packages that you might wish to use" ??

It would just be another data point. We tried to plan our life cycles of technologies as the OS went into the data center.

Plus it allows our maintainers to focus effort on 5/6 enhancements and fixes.

I'd say it is up to maintainers to decide.
FWIW, I know of an idiotic ( and niche ) medical application which still relies on Sybase 7 and the developers blindly refuse to support it on anything but RHEL 4. Or Windows (where they do use Sybase 9...). And no, I could not persuade the users of that application to ditch the application and use something decent and written in this century.

[*] assuming they do use it, of course

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