16:00:09 #startmeeting EPEL meeting (2014-08-22) 16:00:10 Meeting started Fri Aug 22 16:00:09 2014 UTC. The chair is smooge. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot. 16:00:10 Useful Commands: #action #agreed #halp #info #idea #link #topic. 16:00:25 .chairs nirik smooge 16:00:36 hello. 16:00:41 morning. 16:00:46 hi 16:00:52 greetings! 16:00:59 hello 16:01:08 #meetingname EPEL reboot 16:01:08 The meeting name has been set to 'epel_reboot' 16:01:24 #topic meet and greets 16:02:01 thanks.. I forgot that 16:02:02 now it should be able to change the topic. ;) 16:02:07 #topic meet and greets 16:02:34 hello 16:03:14 Hi guys this meeting is about EPEL.next or the re invigoration of EPEL for 7 16:03:27 suggested topics will be 16:03:56 alternate repository ideas 16:04:09 Review and cleanup of EPEL policies 16:04:19 Moving EPEL7 out of Beta 16:04:23 and Open Floor 16:04:39 #chair nirik smooge 16:04:39 Current chairs: nirik smooge 16:04:51 any other items I should add to the agenda? 16:05:44 #topic Fork in the Road (EPIC or EPEL dot releases or same old same old) 16:05:46 * nirik thinks thats fine. I guess we could add a 'should we keep meeting? weekly? bi-weekly? every other fortnight? 16:06:06 ok will add that before the end 16:06:54 so, personally... I'm fine with the ways things are right now. ;) I know that others are not for various reasons... 16:07:11 seconded 16:07:22 i like the alternate repo idea but what do i know =) 16:07:33 So EPEL is at an interesting crosspoint. It has many many many active users but does not have a lot of developers/contributors and what its needs are fiercely split between I need newer stuff in EPEL-5 and I need the exact old stuff in EPEL-5 (or vice versa) 16:08:29 As there is no steering committee to make decisions, we end up making decisions in the end by who shows up at the meeting and going from there. 16:08:34 I agree that the need is there, hopefully the packagers will be there too. 16:09:12 Well most of the packages that are in EPEL are only there because the Fedora owner was asked to put it in EPEL and that owner has no interest in EPEL 16:09:16 between a 'we can make major changes at rhel release points' and a 'seperate repo for fast stuff' I would prefer the seperate repo 16:09:42 to some extent we (the royal CentOS we) can help on the dev side with some things. 16:09:47 but, as noted I am mostly happy with things as they are, so I would expect those people who want this to step up and do the work. ;) 16:09:53 Can we somehow join forces with centos? 16:10:02 orionp: that's why I'm here :-P 16:10:07 along with avij and bstinson 16:10:10 great 16:10:30 I like the separate repo for faster stuff 16:10:40 me too 16:10:44 orionp: would that better meet your needs for python3? 16:11:03 Can a package be kept at an older version in EPEL and newer in the faster repo (EPIC?) 16:11:08 so, I think we may need to take a step back a second to actually look at the issues. 16:11:23 it seems like we have a couple broad things to touch on. 16:11:33 there's about eleventy million things to sort out about another repo. ;) we should probibly make a wiki page or piratepad or something... 16:11:33 i'll be getting into epel development as well though i'm nowhere close to being a professional 16:11:38 Evolution: +1 16:11:44 one is the epel structure itself. 16:11:48 Currently EPEL is tied deeply into Fedora infrastructure. So I get the feeling that a new repository system is going to need to set up either new code in everything from Koji/Bodhi/Fas or set up a new infrastructure with it. 16:11:56 2 is current epel. 3. would be a new repo. 16:12:05 #chair Evolution 16:12:05 Current chairs: Evolution nirik smooge 16:12:35 well, thats a outstanding question: would any newer fast repo be also in fedora infra? or completely seperate? 16:12:41 smooge: its quite easy to setup new tags in koji, bodhi bits etc 16:13:00 we probably will need to set it up as a new product 16:13:03 not a huge deal 16:13:07 dgilmore, I got a different impression from an email from you earlier. My apologies for misreading 16:13:08 Integrating with Fedora git is the best thing about EPEL 16:13:35 so, for a newer fast moving repo, I'd like to see it as a 'separate thing' with people from both centos and fedora 16:13:40 as a collaborative product 16:13:42 smooge: its not without some cost 16:13:47 so has to be carefully done 16:13:51 but its quite doable 16:14:01 orionp: right, thats what we drop by having it seperate, but there's other advantages... 16:14:10 it's of huge benefit to us with respect to our SIG effort, so I'm very much interested in how this should play out. 16:14:19 Evolution: I want to work on ways to enable to contribute to EPEL via a CentOS path 16:14:26 Evolution: it would also allow for more easy things like using centos 32bit x86 or whatever. 16:14:51 woops tried to do this in a different channel 16:14:54 #chair dgilmore 16:14:54 Current chairs: Evolution dgilmore nirik smooge 16:15:05 dgilmore: and vice versa. some of what we do for the sigs may be useful upstream as well. 16:15:05 i'd like to see an epel-desktop 16:15:43 Evolution: sure :) its will take planning and effort and some sharing of resources 16:16:16 If we are going to collaborate with centos (which we should), why only for the fast moving repo? 16:16:20 well, since we seem to be down in the weeds already... we had looked at 2 auth platforms. freeipa and fas. 16:16:26 I think a big plus of how epel works today is the ease of branching from fedora in git 16:16:32 freeipa requires some dev work, and we don't have the $$$ for that. 16:16:57 orionp: as i said epel also 16:17:05 ah 16:17:06 so we're likely going to implement a fas setup. we have koji for our community builders already. 16:17:11 Evolution: we are looking at a fas3 i believe 16:17:31 dgilmore: feature request for federation then? 16:17:32 federated fas 16:17:40 perfect. 16:17:41 Evolution: sure :) 16:17:52 Evolution: yeah, we are going to be working on a fas3 very soon. Good time to get requests in... 16:18:12 Evolution: also, there's talk of a FAD to work on it in december. Would be awesome to get some centos folks along... 16:18:12 where's the appropriate place to do that? 16:18:24 nirik: tell me where and when. 16:18:33 https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL-faster-repo-ideas 16:18:38 Evolution: I think for a seemless CentOS and Fedora pathways to epel contribution it would be much much easier if we shared a kojidb. we could have seperate hubs and builders 16:18:41 (ideas container for questions/comments) 16:19:27 Evolution: https://github.com/fedora-infra/fas/issues 16:19:33 dgilmore: we're already working on adapting the fedora toolkit, so this should be possible. 16:19:42 https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FAD_MirrorManager2_FAS3_2014 16:19:51 (location is all up in the air right now tho) 16:19:52 dgilmore: bstinson is working on fedpkg->centpkg changes. 16:20:05 I believe he's thrown a couple patches at the list for that already 16:20:11 Evolution: i look forward to patches 16:20:29 I pulled some patches in and asked questions on some others 16:20:54 reminds me i need to get on centos-devel and bitch about how the lookaside cache is setup 16:20:59 its a nasty nasty thing 16:21:20 dgilmore: you, kb and mikem can all fight that one out :-P 16:21:46 Evolution: i talked to mikem about it he said to mail the list 16:22:00 * kbsingh pops in 16:22:33 dgilmore: what benefit would a shared kojidb get us? 16:23:18 anyhow, we might be difting off here. ;) 16:23:31 * orionp agrees 16:23:59 Evolution: that people can go to koji.centos.org and see their epel builds 16:24:00 right. so, to the high level topics, what should be addressed first? 16:24:18 ok in any case.. we have 3 roads. It looks like most people would like EPEL to stay the same and we look at setting up a new repository for faster moving stuff. 16:24:33 does that sound correct to people here? 16:24:40 yes 16:25:02 I like that best personally. Then we don't need to change existing expectations on EPEL much. 16:25:23 so how do we best choose what goes where? 16:25:28 #topic EPIC (working title only but that was what EPEL was too) 16:25:36 smooge: I don't think epel has a choice but to maintain course 16:25:47 changing it at this point would have too great an impact. 16:25:57 so EPIC was discussed as the name for a forked repository for faster moving items. 16:26:26 * nirik is happy to use a different name don't care. 16:26:51 I hate the name, but I don't have a better one. 16:27:03 I am only using it as a seperate name to keep it clear its not same-old EPEL. If it turns out we call it EPEL.fast or something like that I don't mind 16:27:13 what would actually "faster moving" means then? 16:27:34 good question. ;) 16:27:38 I'd prefer epel- to build on the EPEL name 16:27:50 overwriting base packages is the idea. 16:27:51 so the general rules for EPEL are: 1) package is to be maintained with only security updates and no ABI/API changes for the 7 year lifetime of RHEL 16:27:59 epel-riptide! 16:28:15 basically 'no incompatible updates' 16:28:34 this new repo could toss that away. But not sure how mad that would make users. ;) 16:28:57 I think the main benefit is API/ABI changes, haven't thought about overriding base - that seems to be a separate issue 16:29:10 what if we make EPIC API/ABI breaks possible at EL point releases? 16:29:12 nirik: but there has to be limits, otherwise you change stable distro for rawhide 16:29:16 2) Packages can only be updated to a newer version if there are no security fixes being backported to the old software and a window to announce that things are going to break is announced 16:29:42 sure. There's lots of possibilities. 16:29:44 bstinson, I would like to cover that in a seperate meeting as that might be weeds. At this point I want to stick to the basic question of what goes where 16:30:13 3) Packages needs owners and orphaned packages are removed regularly. 16:30:16 breaks at point releases don't work too well I don't think... we can't even build against the new point release until after it's out. 16:30:31 nirik, dgilmore anything I missed on what was the EPEL promise to users? 16:30:56 so, one of my more self-serving reasons for being here is the CentOS SIG structure. we have projects like ceph, ovirt etc who need newer packages like libvirt. 16:31:04 smooge: we don't actively do 3, although we should. ;) 16:31:24 I think this is a decent place for the sigs to share these packages, and ensure that their changes get upstreamed if possible. 16:31:39 Evolution: so those are 'newer than base repo' ? 16:31:51 plus it would ensure that these packages are maintained by these groups. 16:31:53 nirik: yes. 16:31:56 i prefer EPEL extras as the fast moving repo 16:32:23 smooge: oh, yeah, and 4) no overlapping with the things we say we won't overlap with 16:33:01 I would prefer to see a new repo minted as something not epel, and not centos 16:33:07 but as a collaboration between the two. 16:33:35 Evolution: well I want EPEL to be a collaboration between the two 16:33:45 and all of this could be an extention on that 16:33:54 eptos! :) 16:33:56 perhaps we need three repos 16:34:02 epel as is 16:34:19 epel-extras for things that move fast, mediawiki python3 etc 16:34:39 epel-universe where we could have newer libvirt etc 16:34:58 dgilmore: what could depend on what? 16:35:03 where if you enable it you are accepting that base os things could be replaced 16:35:05 epel-stable, epel-rolling, epel-edge ? 16:35:17 FWIW, I am fine with mediawiki and python3 in epel. with newer parallel installable packages. But I guess a extras could work depending on how it was set to do the updates. 16:35:22 and things can depend on stuff to their left 16:35:44 kbsingh: something like that yes 16:35:54 kbsingh: what if python3 needs a newer library than in epel/rhel? 16:36:13 mhroncok: then that lib comes at the same level as python3, or a repo on its left 16:36:25 mhroncok: i think most people should try and go as far left as possible 16:36:27 nirik: well in extras they wouldnt need to be parallel installable. you know if it comes from extras it may need some work on updates to keep working 16:36:33 Things can move to the right if needed? 16:36:36 well, here's the issue... 16:37:26 orionp: things should have a graceful sunset process... and new instances, in newer versions of the same thing can come up on the right side 16:37:36 say I use mediawiki in production. It's in epel-extras. The maintainer there says... hey, new incompatible version, pushes it out. I am not ready to upgrade it yet, so either it breaks me, or I avoid the update. Then a security issue comes in the version I am using and no update. 16:37:53 orionp: the challenge is mostly that people need to not be surprised one morning that ZOMG I'm running yesterdays build of ruby 16:37:55 if there's 2 parallel installable versions... _I_ can decide when to move 16:38:02 nirik: sure. not saying its not easy. 16:38:06 right. expectations are key here. 16:38:20 we need to have a very clear process for when incompatible changes happen 16:38:27 nirik: but by putting it in extras its setting an expetctation 16:38:33 its just an example 16:38:49 parallel installs are hard as well... the Provides: requires: mapping gets hairy ( eg. pho53 and php52 and php54 -should- all provide PHP - but how does a mediawiki Require its php ? ) 16:38:53 yeah, althought I might not want to use it if it was in there due to the above reasons. 16:39:04 it has to bee crystal clear that in soem repos, thing are rolling and can get broken 16:39:05 * nirik nods. 16:40:11 so, what about reducing the life expectancy of the repo as a whole. 16:40:22 we would need to set expectations clearly 16:40:22 rhel extras has a lifespan of 18 months iirc 16:40:50 if we want to drive expectation based on repo name, then I'm going to vote we dont use words like 'extras' and 'plus' but more like 'rolling' and 'stable' and 'longterm' and 'edge' 16:41:00 Evolution: i was thining epel-extras would work somewhat similiar to rhel-extras 16:41:34 kbsingh: +1 16:41:38 dgilmore: and that is? 16:42:21 https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/extras 16:42:24 thanks 16:43:04 so it seems we are all kinda on the same page 16:43:21 we have some naming, and workflows etc to sort out 16:43:35 and some implementation details to figure out 16:44:22 that's what other meetings are for 16:44:37 right 16:44:42 do we want to address the other major point smooge brought up with EPEL policy cleanup? 16:44:43 rhel extras seems like there are only "extra" packages (as oposite to let's say Debian Backports) 16:44:49 or policy creation in general? 16:45:03 mhroncok: right extra packages rapidly changing 16:45:35 dgilmore: and if they need newer dependencies that would break regular epel? 16:45:42 question to Evolution and kbsingh .. is RHEL-7-extras rolled into CentOS directly or as a seperate repo? 16:45:52 into centos extras at the moment 16:46:02 thanks 16:46:07 it won't be exactly 1:1 16:46:12 but it rolls right in. 16:46:25 * nirik understands why rhel-extras is there, but it kinda makes me nervous. 16:46:26 no, i suspect our extras will be larger ( or be epel-stable ) or something similar 16:46:30 the extras repo is where we were going to add things like epel-release 16:46:51 so we would have everything from rhel-extras, plus a bit more. 16:46:52 if we were able to find a way for EPEL to -be- the CentOS Extras, were winning 16:47:01 but large chunks of values of 'win' 16:47:16 since we can then setup EPEL to be the primary target for SIG's and parallel / variant builds and content 16:47:32 kbsingh: well we decided after Red Hat requested to remove everyting in rhel-extras from epel 16:47:42 (and ISVs) 16:47:52 ( some might still fork and do their own repos, and thats fine - even good to some extent ) - but if their content was going into a single pool, much win 16:48:17 kbsingh: im sure there is some need for a copr type setup as well 16:48:36 which is maybe where ovirt lands with its replacing libvirt etc 16:48:52 ovirt etc are going ito CentOS SIG's right ? 16:49:06 yes. 16:49:16 kbsingh: i think so, Evolution said that it wants to replace libvirt 16:49:17 at the moment they are setting up to be their own repo, only depending on CentOS base + Virt SIG content 16:49:21 https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL-faster-repo-ideas <- have been updating with ideas, everyone feel free to add issues and proposed solutions... 16:49:27 so we need to work out how to enable that 16:50:01 so, i have a problem here - need to get onto yet another call, 5th of the day, in 11 min, and want to stretch. How can i follow the convo going forward, is this going to be on epel-devel ? 16:50:20 should be good there, yes. 16:50:21 kbsingh: meetbot is logging, so notes should be sent out, yes. 16:51:34 ta 16:52:46 so, to keep things moving a bit, what else needs to be addressed? smooge || nirik || dgilmore ? 16:53:37 lots of policy questions: when are incompatible upgrades allowed? when are overlaps allowed? 16:53:38 I think at this point we need to outline what we want and take it to the epel and centos communities and get buy in 16:54:00 yeah, so I'd say we work on the wiki page/come up with more detailed plans and see what we have next week? 16:54:01 answering nirik's questions in the process 16:54:29 we seem largely on teh same page. get things down and present it 16:54:55 okay. dgilmore you'll bring up your comments/question about the buildsys etc on the centos-devel list as well? 16:55:23 Evolution: sure. 16:55:39 thanks 16:55:46 nirik: it might be worth putting something on there about rpm spec stylistic guides for providing requirements in a repo-specific way 16:55:58 requirements *and* provides 16:56:30 or at least the fact that some sort of suggestions will probably be necessary 16:56:36 you mean per repo/branch guidelines for specs? 16:56:42 yeah 16:56:48 sure 16:57:21 since there's going to be issues with how, say, mediawiki in -edge will require the -edge version of php 16:57:33 (maybe) 16:57:43 have we moved to the next topic or are moving to it.. I got lost in where we are :) 16:57:44 I'm not sure how the packages from the multiple repos will interact 16:57:57 smooge: so did everyone else I think. 16:58:05 ok since we are in the weeds. 16:58:15 it got all "leeeroy jenkins" rather quickly 16:58:26 well, it wouldn't have to require a newer php, but it could 16:58:27 sorry 16:58:56 simply have to requires php(language) >= min_version (which should be provided by all php versions) 16:59:03 well I didn't mean for him to leave 16:59:20 I wasn't even directing that at him. 16:59:25 I need to run, have to go pick up my new laptop and get the brakes on my car fixed 16:59:27 that happened well before he said anything 16:59:29 * nirik hopes that was unrelated. ;) 16:59:41 dgilmore: safe travels. 16:59:46 #topic Cleanup of Fedora EPEL policies 17:00:02 billings if you read this on epel-devel later... sorry we weren't asking you to leave :) 17:00:29 ok so our policies have been rather haphazard since the steering committee wandered into the wilderness a long time ago 17:00:53 heck I am not sure we ever got to cleaning up our wiki pages from stuff from Extras days 17:01:00 well, I think that is largely because there aren't many policies or decisions 17:01:20 I did a complete revamp of our wiki stuff when epel6 went out. 17:01:35 which people then reverted part of and brought back the horrible faq page. ;( 17:01:53 so, do we re-implement a new committee? 17:01:54 * nirik hasn't done much to wiki space since 6 tho 17:02:37 I dislike wikis in general these days. git+markdown/asciidoc etc makes it remarkably easy for anyone to contribute or fix things. 17:03:07 and there's usually a chance at more sane versioning 17:03:26 wikis do tend to get overgrown and horrible 17:03:51 presumably the committee would be charged with directing packages through the workflow? 17:04:55 well the first thing would be to document and clear up problems in the workflow :) 17:05:01 well, how would we select a committee? 17:05:50 I'm fine with people who show up to meetings and do work come to consensus on things... but if people want more formal we could. 17:06:26 i think there should be at least 1 or 2 "formal" members to provide some continuity 17:07:08 I'm fine with lazy consensus for day-to-day business, but I agree with bstinson. there should be a couple people in an official capacity who are ultimately responsible. 17:07:31 well, smooge and me and dgilmore have been doing everything... so thats 3... ;) 17:08:09 I'd nominate myself from the centos side if you'll have me. 17:08:21 sure. 17:08:25 +1 17:08:53 So, start with 4 and add from there? (although 4 means there could a a deadlock if voting is used) 17:10:21 I think i was the last chair of the EESCO and put it to bed.. but not sure. 17:10:22 one more from centos would make sense 17:10:27 and to be clear, I'd love for there to be more active people working on things... there's lots of stuff we could do, but don't 17:10:49 but that doesn't need any comittee... just people willing to step up and work on things. ;) 17:12:11 nirik: honestly, I'm somewhat alright with the possibility of a deadlock. 17:12:32 sure. I don't think it will really happen.. we are all reasonable people. 17:12:37 hahahahaha 17:12:42 *snort* hahahaahaha 17:12:43 except that smooge character 17:13:09 yeah, he's a bit shifty looking. 17:13:21 anyhow, I have a ton of other stuff to get to, was there more we wanted to hit today? 17:13:46 I would like to end the meeting in 15 at the latest 17:13:56 #topic Moving EPEL-7 out of beta 17:14:25 so how is our feeling of doing this? In the next week, two weeks after alpha? 17:14:38 I'm fine anytime. 17:14:51 the problem has been that I don't fully know the process and dgilmore has been too busy. 17:14:57 we really need to make a SOP out of it. 17:16:06 ok first order of business. SOP needs to be made for moving stuff from beta to production. It will be helpful for any other channels we make 17:16:07 nirik: added a section to your wiki page. 17:16:55 would signing all the current epel7 beta packages be a suitable first step? or would that need to be redone anyway for all packages? I don't know the release process well enough. 17:16:56 I propose that we move EPEL out of beta on Sep 15 17:17:04 it's mostly just a matter of changing koji tags, adding stuff to bodhi, making the base repos, etc. 17:17:08 Let's do it - need broken deps check though 17:17:15 avij: they are mostly all signed now. 17:17:33 yes. there are still a few things (yumex) with broken deps 17:17:35 orionp: we were also going to untag things with broken deps 17:17:38 nirik: someone complained about fail2ban not being signed a while ago. I have not checked the situation. 17:17:58 avij: they are not 100% signed. ;) it's as we do it.. 17:18:18 that gives us 3 weeks to clean up broken deps, add what stuff needs to be added, get the docs written 17:18:34 I'd actually prefer to do it sooner personally. 17:18:49 people have been chomping at the bit for it 17:18:51 Is there a list of broken deps anywhere? 17:19:06 orionp: I sent one to the list a while back, but 'repoclosure' will give you one. ;) 17:19:07 I don't think what's currently epel-7-beta would change in policy from epel-6, which isn't going anywhere. 17:19:26 I'm fine with moving epel-7 to production and growing it within the current scope. 17:19:47 as we adjust/clean-up we do so for all epel, not just a branch or two 17:20:14 tl;dr +1 to nirik's "do it faster" 17:22:16 nirik, ok I didn't know how alpha freeze and such would affect things 17:22:44 well, we just need to get some cycles from dgilmore. ;) 17:23:16 it's also possible that the process for f21 going into alpha freeze has a bunch of overlap with epel7 going out of beta, so we could share sop/process there. 17:24:59 If it makes sense, I'm completely fine with borrowing heavily from working practices. 17:25:10 there's no need to invent new wheels. 17:25:47 okie dokie. We can't decide on this without dgilmore so we will need to take this to email then. 17:26:15 #topic Open Floor 17:26:42 ok any items for open floor.. or everyone typed themselves silly 17:27:33 do we want to meet again next week ? same time? 17:28:38 I'm fine with that. 17:29:08 I am fine with that. I have had 1600 UTC as a meeting reminder for 2 years 17:29:32 so next meeting will be next Friday. It will be 1 hour long period 17:29:42 wfm 17:29:52 okie dokie. I will close in 10 17:30:11 #endmeeting