20:00:03 <tdawson> #startmeeting EPEL (2023-08-30)
20:00:03 <zodbot> Meeting started Wed Aug 30 20:00:03 2023 UTC.
20:00:03 <zodbot> This meeting is logged and archived in a public location.
20:00:03 <zodbot> The chair is tdawson. Information about MeetBot at https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Zodbot#Meeting_Functions.
20:00:03 <zodbot> Useful Commands: #action #agreed #halp #info #idea #link #topic.
20:00:03 <zodbot> The meeting name has been set to 'epel_(2023-08-30)'
20:00:05 <tdawson> #meetingname epel
20:00:05 <zodbot> The meeting name has been set to 'epel'
20:00:06 <tdawson> #chair nirik tdawson pgreco carlwgeorge salimma dcavalca dherrera gotmax23 smooge
20:00:06 <zodbot> Current chairs: carlwgeorge dcavalca dherrera gotmax23 nirik pgreco salimma smooge tdawson
20:00:08 <tdawson> #topic aloha
20:00:22 <rcallicotte> .hi
20:00:23 <zodbot> rcallicotte: rcallicotte 'Robby Callicotte' <rcallicotte@mailbox.org>
20:00:38 <nirik> morning
20:00:39 <tdawson> Hi rcallicotte
20:00:43 <michel-slm> .hello salimma
20:00:44 <tdawson> Morning nirik
20:00:44 <zodbot> michel-slm: salimma 'Michel Lind' <michel@michel-slm.name>
20:00:49 <tdawson> Hello michel-slm
20:00:51 <dherrera> .hi
20:00:52 <zodbot> dherrera: dherrera 'Diego Herrera' <dherrera@redhat.com>
20:00:56 <tdawson> Hi dherrera
20:01:07 <carlwgeorge> .hi
20:01:07 <michel-slm> Neal is on a call next to me :P
20:01:07 <zodbot> carlwgeorge: carlwgeorge 'Carl George' <carl@redhat.com>
20:01:28 <tdawson> michel-slm: I thought he was at the doctor
20:01:31 <tdawson> Hi carlwgeorge
20:01:34 <michel-slm> that's neil, not neal
20:01:41 <michel-slm> #AllLookSame :P
20:01:58 <rcallicotte> lol
20:01:59 <tdawson> Ahh ... sorry .  Hi Neal
20:02:07 <nirik> it's a ne{ai}l invasion!
20:02:32 <michel-slm> tdawson: can you chair me ? the salimma nick is on the Matrix side so it's sadly unusable now
20:02:36 <dcavalca> .hi
20:02:37 <zodbot> dcavalca: dcavalca 'Davide Cavalca' <davide@cavalca.name>
20:02:46 <tdawson> #chair michel-slm
20:02:46 <zodbot> Current chairs: carlwgeorge dcavalca dherrera gotmax23 michel-slm nirik pgreco salimma smooge tdawson
20:02:55 <tdawson> Hi dcavalca
20:03:07 <smooge> hello
20:03:14 <tdawson> Hello smooge
20:04:37 <Son_Goku> hey!
20:04:40 <Son_Goku> .hello ngompa
20:04:41 <zodbot> Son_Goku: ngompa 'Neal Gompa' <ngompa13@gmail.com>
20:04:51 <tdawson> Hey Son_Goku
20:05:05 <tdawson> #topic End Of Life (EOL)
20:05:06 <tdawson> RHEL 7 / epel-7 will go EOL on 2024-06-30
20:05:08 <tdawson> CentOS Stream 8 / epel-8-next goes EOL in 2024-05-31
20:05:09 <tdawson> CentOS Stream 9 / epel-9-next goes EOL in 2027-05-31
20:05:30 <jonathanspw> .hi
20:05:31 <zodbot> jonathanspw: jonathanspw 'Jonathan Wright' <jonathan@almalinux.org>
20:05:36 <tdawson> Hi jonathanspw
20:05:44 <jonathanspw> howdy!
20:05:45 <tdawson> #topic EPEL Issues https://pagure.io/epel/issues
20:05:46 <tdawson> https://pagure.io/epel/issues?tags=meeting&status=Open
20:05:55 <smooge> Need to update that with a 'There are only 2XX installation days until EL7 goes EOL'
20:06:26 <tdawson> smooge: That would mean I'd have to update it each time ... hmmm ... or write a script ...
20:06:30 <michel-slm> do we need a website with a counter?
20:06:46 <michel-slm> IsItDeadYet.org
20:07:03 <rcallicotte> nice
20:07:19 <jonathanspw> deadbeef.com
20:07:25 <smooge> 276 days until CentOS Stream 8 EOL and 307 days until EL7 EOL
20:07:33 <carlwgeorge> https://endoflife.date/rhel
20:08:01 <smooge> https://endoflife.date/centos-stream
20:08:30 <michel-slm> ooh nice
20:09:12 <tdawson> Cool.  I'll add those to the agenda.
20:10:31 <tdawson> I marked the formalizing committee member process as a meeting item .... it doesn't mean we have to decide today, but I figured it's and issue .. anyway
20:10:39 <tdawson> .epel 240
20:10:40 <zodbot> tdawson: Issue #240: Formalizing the EPEL Steering Committee member process - epel - Pagure.io - https://pagure.io/epel/issue/240
20:11:40 <tdawson> Here are my list of pros and cons on "lifelong" vs "Set Time"  - https://pagure.io/epel/issue/240#comment-870587
20:12:13 <tdawson> After writting those down, I started leaning towards the "Set Time"
20:12:14 <smooge> Yeah I read through those and felt they covered them
20:12:31 <smooge> Going from my time of lifelong.. I would not do it again
20:12:54 <jonathanspw> I put a +1 in the issue for set time.
20:12:57 <nirik> question; how big a pool of interested people do we think there are?
20:13:15 * jonathanspw raises hand
20:13:34 <tdawson> nirik: I think the pool is larger than 7 ... at the present time I'm betting 9 or 10.
20:14:19 <nirik> ok. just curious... since we could run into problems if people step down and there's no interested people to replace them.
20:14:29 <nirik> (at least unless we had a flexable membership number)
20:14:45 <jonathanspw> could mirror what fesco does which cites basically that people don't *have* to be replaced
20:14:56 <jonathanspw> but also guides when and how replacements should happen
20:14:59 <tdawson> That's a possiblity.  Maybe say that 7 is the maximum.
20:15:26 * carlwgeorge nods in agreement
20:16:58 <carlwgeorge> in the unlikely scenario we end up with a split vote due to an even number of members, we can defer the vote until we elect or appoint another person to get to an odd number of votes
20:17:22 <tdawson> Ohh ... I like that wording ... I'm writting that down.
20:17:33 <carlwgeorge> i think i read something about fesco having a temporary appointment process in the case of someone stepping down mid-cycle
20:17:58 <jonathanspw> carlwgeorge: yep there is one
20:18:13 <carlwgeorge> https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fesco/FESCo_election_policy/#filling_vacant_seats
20:18:23 <nirik> yeah, fesco uses elections, but if there's not enough people standing for election then there is a fallback appointment process.
20:18:29 <nirik> I think it was used once
20:19:04 <carlwgeorge> watch out, i'll appoint my dog, and proxy his votes since he can't type
20:19:10 <tdawson> With me going over to the "set time" ... is there anyone other than nirik that is wanting to keep it "lifelong" ?
20:19:13 <tdawson> *laughs*
20:19:13 <nirik> and in that case I am pretty sure the person appointed was the person who got the next most votes in the last election
20:19:44 <nirik> well, I am not sure I do... still pondering on it... but I will of course defer to everyone else.
20:20:23 <carlwgeorge> i think just having elections will make more people be interested in running
20:20:34 <tdawson> We don't have to have a vote this week.  I'm ok waiting another week.  I just don' t want to drag the conversation out if everyone is on the same side.
20:21:10 <carlwgeorge> if we consistently don't have enough people running, we could consider dropping the 7 down to 5
20:21:13 <nirik> carlwgeorge: it could yeah... dunno. I guess there's always the thought of just trying and seeing and changing it if it doesn't work
20:21:39 <jonathanspw> Something that will have to be agreed upon is which current seats are the first up for election.  If it's to be offset then some seats will be up for election first, other seats remaining appointed for a time.
20:22:02 <nirik> well... if we have 9 people showing up to meetings and providing good input, I think it's a bit weird to only allow a smaller subset to vote on things...
20:22:03 <carlwgeorge> draw straws
20:22:10 <smooge> we can consistently drop down to 1 person which is an odd number and hopefully not deadlocked
20:22:16 <jonathanspw> OR if there was to be an "immediate" vote the top X in the first election could be longer term seats, with the bottom ones being a shorter initial term.
20:22:51 <tdawson> smooge: A committee of 1 ... always get's things done
20:23:14 <carlwgeorge> jonathanspw: that's a neat idea, top 3 or 4 do a full term, bottom 3 or 4 do a half term
20:23:23 <jonathanspw> Yeah, just for the first election to start the offset.
20:23:29 <dcavalca> as long as the number is odd to avoid deadlocks, I don't think the exact number matters much
20:23:50 <jonathanspw> well since troy is the lifetime chair he could always be the tie breaker :D
20:23:53 <carlwgeorge> yeah, and i don't think we'll have issues sticking with 7
20:24:15 <tdawson> Here's the question about voting for committee member (as opposed to votes during out meeting) ... who get's to vote?
20:24:17 <nirik> I kinda like 9 like fesco... but perhaps I am just being contrary. ;)
20:24:51 <michel-slm> 7 until EPEL7 is retired, then 9
20:25:06 <michel-slm> we elect the last two when 7 is dead :D
20:25:39 <jonathanspw> lol
20:25:41 <jonathanspw> +1
20:25:42 <carlwgeorge> tdawson: that brings us to https://pagure.io/epel/issue/242
20:25:54 <tdawson> jonathanspw: Aha .... someone finally brought it up. :) ... after we get the committee stuff settled, I was going to open a new issue on how long the chair stays chair.
20:25:56 <nirik> ha
20:26:21 <jonathanspw> tdawson: I think after each election the newly-elected steering co. should decide on a chair amongst themselves.
20:26:37 <carlwgeorge> that makes sense to me
20:26:39 <jonathanspw> thus making a chair's term (as chair) half that of a member term.
20:26:46 <tdawson> carlwgeorge: It might, but it might not.  I think a vote for committee members is (can be) different than a vote on policy.
20:27:19 <nirik> I like rotating chair, it helps spread out things, but sure...
20:27:26 <dcavalca> does being the chair confer any practical powers/responsibilities?
20:27:39 <carlwgeorge> the power of running the meeting
20:27:39 <tdawson> jonathanspw: I'm not against that ... I just didn't want to muddy the waters while we talked about committee members.
20:27:45 <jonathanspw> dcavalca: I don't think so, which is why letting it rotate more frequently is helpful.
20:27:56 <nirik> as far as who can vote, for fesco it's fedora contributors (ie, at least one group)
20:28:06 <smooge> the power of being pinged on why is XYZ broken and how can you get it fixed by yesterday
20:28:22 <carlwgeorge> tdawson: oh good point.  we could tack it on to fedora's elections so all fedorans can vote on the committee members.
20:28:31 <jonathanspw> I'd support mirroring who can vote in fedora elections - contributors
20:28:33 <tdawson> dcavalca: Two power ... 1 - like carlwgeorge said, the power to run the meeting 2 - in the event of a split vote, can give the final vote.
20:28:52 <carlwgeorge> which is kinda the idea of the committee being representatives of the whole community
20:29:41 <tdawson> carlwgeorge: And ... that's what I'm not sure about ... how many Fedoran's care about EPEL?  What if we're getting just random votes because
20:30:06 <carlwgeorge> how many fedorans care about mindshare?  or council?  or fesco?  same deal
20:30:16 * nirik nods.
20:30:32 <tdawson> Good point.
20:30:39 <nirik> The only other thing that would make any sense would be epel-packager-sig members... but that seems pretty narrow.
20:30:52 <tdawson> Ya ... I think that's too narrow.
20:31:45 <tdawson> One good thing about piggy-backing on Fedora's elections is they already have it setup and run it.   Less work for us.
20:32:06 <jonathanspw> Piggybacking on Fedora seems perfect
20:32:10 <michel-slm> yeah, I think having the same rules as FESCo, council etc makes sense
20:32:31 <michel-slm> dry run in case any of us want to run for other committees too ;)
20:33:42 <tdawson> I just saw the time, are we ok with me time-boxing this for now, and I'll write up what we discussed on the issue.
20:34:02 <nirik> well, we did have it all set to run... if we had a PM to do so. ;(
20:34:23 <dcavalca> do most people in Fedora care / have context on EPEL enough to meaningfully vote on this?
20:34:53 <Son_Goku> I think this is the crux of why we don't do elections in the first place
20:35:05 <dcavalca> conversely, do we think there are people that care about EPEL and should have input but for whatever reason aren't involved in Fedora enough to vote?
20:35:14 <jonathanspw> dcavalca: probably a somewhat small subset.  I thinka  message to people to not vote if they don't have an interest in epel might be good.
20:35:38 <smooge> currently not a large amount of people vote in Fedora period anymore.
20:35:53 <nirik> there may be epel users/consumers that aren't in any groups in fedora that might want to vote... hard to tell
20:36:02 <jonathanspw> smooge Doesn't mean we shouldn't embrace elections as a way for community to have a say in what's going on
20:36:07 <smooge> but it doesn't mean that having no elections
20:36:28 <smooge> yeah jonathanspw trying to type on the phone is failing
20:36:36 <tdawson> :)
20:36:53 <michel-slm> if we announce it in the epel-devel list, is that sufficient?
20:37:05 <tdawson> And epel-annouce
20:37:06 <michel-slm> if you don't subscribe to that list you're likely not interested
20:37:11 <michel-slm> ah yes, and announce
20:37:17 <Son_Goku> smooge: this was always kind of the case... though we had a nice spike during the pandemic
20:37:19 <smooge> i would tie it into the fedora elections, and just do epel-devel, announce and fedora-announce
20:37:28 <tdawson> +1
20:37:50 <carlwgeorge> based on countme metrics, i think the pool of epel consumers that don't participate in fedora is pretty big, and an election for epsco could be a good incentive for them to get more involved
20:38:17 <jonathanspw> good point
20:38:18 <smooge> after that it doesn't really matter. The main goal of elections is to give ownership of decisions to the community
20:38:37 <jonathanspw> we know epel usage is huge, but epel contributors are low
20:38:58 <nirik> epel users have always been... less involved than fedora ones...
20:38:59 <dcavalca> carlwgeorge: that is a good point, and I would love to see more involvement from EPEL users
20:39:22 <carlwgeorge> and this could also lead to those epel users getting more involved in other areas of fedora
20:39:49 <tdawson> I'm going to timebox this so we can move onto the next subject.  I will put what we talked about into the issue.  If someone feels I missed something, feel free to add it.
20:39:50 <carlwgeorge> maybe i'm being too optimistic, but at least in my case epel is what brought me into fedora
20:40:24 <tdawson> Oddly enough, the next subject is about.... voting :)
20:40:30 <jonathanspw> epel also brought me here :)
20:40:56 <tdawson> carlwgeorge: Although, I did notice that you didn't mark yours with "meeting" ... are you ok talking about it today?
20:41:24 <tdawson> .epel 242
20:41:25 <zodbot> tdawson: Issue #242: Formalizing the EPEL Steering Committee voting process - epel - Pagure.io - https://pagure.io/epel/issue/242
20:41:36 <carlwgeorge> oh i forget to tag it.  but considering the time i'm fine punting it to next week if needed.
20:41:57 <tdawson> OK, I'm fine punting until next week as well.
20:41:57 <smooge> well tag it
20:42:06 <smooge> so you don't forget next week
20:42:13 <carlwgeorge> of course if people have feedback to share we can talk about it, i don't have anything more to say other than what's in the issue (so far)
20:42:30 <tdawson> I'm going to punt to next week.
20:42:35 <tdawson> #topic Old Business
20:43:12 <tdawson> Is there any Old Business that needs to be brought up?
20:43:15 <jonathanspw> speaking of punting...college football starts up this weekend. #offtopic
20:43:15 <smooge> is this where we talk about EL6 packages (and yes that is an old joke i am reusing)
20:43:29 <tdawson> *laughs*
20:43:38 <tdawson> But ... no
20:43:41 <jonathanspw> i logged into a el6 machine earlier today...
20:43:44 <jonathanspw> yelled at that customer to upgrade
20:43:55 * nirik will be starfielding this weekend.
20:44:14 <jonathanspw> nirik: roll tide
20:45:01 <tdawson> OK, moving onto Open Floor
20:45:12 <tdawson> #topic General Issues / Open Floor
20:45:27 <tdawson> If nobody else has anything, I have one thing for Open Floor.
20:45:42 <michel-slm> I have some things but I can go after tdawson
20:46:08 <tdawson> michel-slm: I'll let you go, mine is possibly short
20:47:01 <tdawson> I also seem to have lost my link that I was going to point people to.
20:47:41 <tdawson> Oh, I found it - https://almalinux.org/blog/new-repositories-for-almalinux-os-synergy-and-testing/
20:48:22 <jonathanspw> Oh....so about that
20:48:31 * carlwgeorge laughs
20:48:56 <tdawson> I think Alma's synergy repo is rather cool.  It's sorta like an EPEL for EPEL.
20:49:11 <jonathanspw> I'm pushing really really really hard for us to be EPEL-first - ie avoiding the whole "if it gets in EPEL then we'll remove it from synergy" thing.  I think I've about got everyone on board with this...had a quick runthrough of fedora/epel packaging processes last week showing everyone how easy it is
20:49:24 <michel-slm> tdawson can go first - sorry, was distracted tracking some bugs
20:49:31 <jonathanspw> So the net result *should* be EPEL gets a lot more contributors/packagers directly.  The "removed it if gets in EPEL" part should be kind of rare I hope.
20:49:42 <nirik> awesome
20:49:47 <rcallicotte> neato!!
20:49:50 <jonathanspw> I have one person that should be submitting a package for review this week that I'll sponsor, with a few more in the works for sponsorship.
20:50:21 <carlwgeorge> i'm with jonathanspw, almost everything in synergy should be in epel
20:50:47 <dherrera> from what i'm seeing Synergy depends on EPEL too
20:50:59 <jonathanspw> It does.  installing synergy will automatically install/enable epel and crb
20:51:07 <carlwgeorge> i've checked quite a few packages in there, and what bothers me is the vast majority are just fedora rebuilds with no bug filed to request an epel branch.  meaning they probably didn't even try.
20:51:21 <jonathanspw> carlwgeorge: I'm working on it man :p
20:51:40 <tdawson> jonathanspw: I tried out the Paledron desktop they had in there ... there was a bug (some missing packages) and it was a little fuzzy on how to get that feedback to the developers.
20:52:02 <carlwgeorge> i found one that had a request that the fedora maintainer declined for epel8, but said he was open to co-maintainers that could maintain an epel8 branch
20:52:13 <jonathanspw> tdawson: yep that's a problem too.  We're still working on getting things re-aligned since the RH source changes.  Our position is now much different than before when it was basically "complain to RHEL".
20:52:18 <jonathanspw> bugs.almalinux.org is the place though
20:52:40 <tdawson> Ah, thanks.
20:52:49 <carlwgeorge> also if it's gonna be a short term "try something out" repo in the course of getting something into epel proper, i'm not sure why copr wasn't a better choice
20:53:07 <jonathanspw> So I guess it's worth noting, anyone that has feedback about this repo please please please bring it to me if you don't know where to send it/etc.  The goal is not to compete with EPEL at all.
20:53:23 <jonathanspw> carlwgeorge: preaching to the choir
20:53:46 <tdawson> jonathanspw: Sure thing.  Well, I'll file a bug for those packages, but I'll bring things to you then.
20:53:47 <carlwgeorge> i suspected as much
20:53:55 <dcavalca> > The Synergy repository is designed for any possible package that is not present in RHEL or EPEL yet, but has been requested by a member of the AlmaLinux community, for the community. While we do encourage and welcome contributions, as soon as the package appears to be in EPEL it will be removed from the Synergy repository.
20:54:23 * michel-slm needs to bring up his items since they need votes
20:54:30 <jonathanspw> tdawson: thanks.  we're still working on a lot of structuring.  Soon we should be starting up "ALESCo" inspired by FESCo to help steer the direction of what we do from a non-RH perspective and it will be overseeing what goes into synergy
20:54:35 <tdawson> michel-slm: Oh, OK.  Go for it.
20:54:42 <carlwgeorge> i even had to let them know on that last part that there was a duplicate to get it removed from synergy
20:55:01 <dcavalca> jonathanspw: my feedback here would to have some kind of policy on the Alma side to strive to keep Synergy as small as possible and actively get packages into EPEL/CentOS/whatever is the best upstream as soon as possible
20:55:02 <michel-slm> so last week we talked about incompatible upgrades for zeek and also retiring the old django from EPEL
20:55:05 <michel-slm> any objections?
20:55:13 <Son_Goku> none from me
20:55:15 <michel-slm> the mailing list seems quiet
20:55:16 <jonathanspw> none here
20:55:25 <carlwgeorge> dewit.gif
20:55:26 <tdawson> michel-slm: Oh, that's right.  No objections from me.
20:55:38 <carlwgeorge> +1
20:55:44 <nirik> +1 to both
20:55:52 <michel-slm> neat. and the other thing is a quick announcement that Son_Goku and I are doing a push to finalize getting mailman3 in EPEL 9
20:55:54 <dherrera> sure :)
20:56:05 <dherrera> nice :D
20:56:14 <tdawson> Ya!!
20:56:14 <dcavalca> +1
20:56:15 <michel-slm> looking ok apart from some single-person dependencies
20:56:30 <Son_Goku> yeah... :/
20:56:53 <michel-slm> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2236249
20:57:09 <michel-slm> we'll get nirik to help ping that so we don't have to wait for the full process :)
20:57:12 <nirik> hurray!
20:57:48 <nirik> yeah, happy to help... then comes the fun part... standing up a staging instance, moving our stuff into it and then prod...
20:58:54 <Son_Goku> let's dew it
20:58:55 <michel-slm> right, then we find out if any of the packages are buggy :P
20:59:03 <tdawson> :)
20:59:07 <michel-slm> I sent nirik the list we can try to expedite
20:59:10 <Son_Goku> then after this I can get back to the _other_ infra apps that need to be packaged for epel9
20:59:21 <nirik> many many thanks on working on this. I know it's been a long road
20:59:27 <michel-slm> and carlwgeorge already independently pushed out one of the package we need, so thanks :)
20:59:32 <nirik> Son_Goku: pagure. ;)
20:59:39 <carlwgeorge> which one was that
20:59:39 <Son_Goku> yes!
21:00:10 <michel-slm> carlwgeorge: we need falcon, it needs mujson which you just built, and also two packages we're stuck on but I've filed requests
21:00:22 <michel-slm> stuck on aiofiles and cbor2
21:00:22 <carlwgeorge> yeah i'm still working on falcon, it's messy
21:00:30 <michel-slm> oh I can build aiofiles
21:00:41 <carlwgeorge> i filed epel9 requests for aiofiles and cbor2
21:00:53 <michel-slm> drats, I'll merge my requests
21:01:52 <michel-slm> longer term I am going to propose we make Python packages comaintained by python sig, because this is painful :)
21:01:56 <michel-slm> anyway... we're out of time
21:02:02 <tdawson> It looks like our time is up.  Thank you all for the good discussions today.  This re-working the committee process is being alot less painful than I was expecting.  And thank you all for all the work you do for EPEL and it's community.
21:02:14 <tdawson> Talk to ya'll next week, if not sooner.
21:02:27 <rcallicotte> I know its late but I just wanted to say thanks to tdawson for helping me with my rubygem issue on monday.
21:02:33 <rcallicotte> bye all
21:02:35 <jonathanspw> u
21:02:37 <nirik> thanks tdawson and everyone.
21:02:38 <jonathanspw> y'all have a good one
21:02:38 <smooge> in the past python sig had 0 interest in maintaining/touching/looking at EPEL packages
21:02:39 <tdawson> rcallicotte: You are very welcome.
21:02:39 <dherrera> thx tdawson :)
21:02:42 <tdawson> #endmeeting