#meeting-1:fedoraproject.org log

<@meetbot:fedora.im>

17:34:57

Text Minutes: https://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/meeting-1_matrix_fedoraproject-org/2025-05-07/fedora-coreos-meeting.2025-05-07-16.30.txt

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:01:53

!startmeeting EPEL (2025-05-07)

<@meetbot:fedora.im>

18:01:54

Meeting started at 2025-05-07 18:01:53 UTC

<@meetbot:fedora.im>

18:01:54

The Meeting name is 'EPEL (2025-05-07)'

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:01:59

!meetingname epel

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:01:59

!topic aloha

<@meetbot:fedora.im>

18:02:00

The Meeting Name is now epel

<@dherrera:fedora.im>

18:02:03

!hi

<@zodbot:fedora.im>

18:02:04

Diego Herrera (dherrera) - he / him / his

<@rcallicotte:fedora.im>

18:02:05

!hi

<@zodbot:fedora.im>

18:02:07

Robby Callicotte (rcallicotte) - he / him / his

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:02:07

!hi

<@zodbot:fedora.im>

18:02:10

Neal Gompa (ngompa) - he / him / his

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:02:28

Hi Diego Herrera Robby Callicotte and Conan Kudo

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:02:42

I feel like I just saw ya'll. :)

<@carlwgeorge:fedora.im>

18:03:18

!hi

<@zodbot:fedora.im>

18:03:19

Carl George (carlwgeorge) - he / him / his

<@elguero:fedora.im>

18:03:20

!hi

<@zodbot:fedora.im>

18:03:21

None (elguero)

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:03:41

Hi Carl George and Michael L. Young

<@salimma:fedora.im>

18:03:43

!hi

<@zodbot:fedora.im>

18:03:44

Michel Lind (salimma) - he / him / his

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:04:32

Hi Michel Lind UTC-6

<@salimma:fedora.im>

18:05:01

I'm going through the list of orphaned packages to pick things up so slightly not paying attention

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:05:26

!topic EPEL Issues https://pagure.io/epel/issues

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:05:26

!link https://pagure.io/epel/issues?tags=meeting&status=Open

<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>

18:06:05

morning

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:06:12

I'm going to go "newest first" for no other reason than ... cuz.

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:06:18

Morning nirik

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:06:28

!epel 330

<@zodbot:fedora.im>

18:06:30

● **Assignee:** ngompa

<@zodbot:fedora.im>

18:06:30

**epel #330** (https://pagure.io/epel/issue/330):**switch EPEL 10 to zstd repodata**

<@zodbot:fedora.im>

18:06:30

<@zodbot:fedora.im>

18:06:30

● **Opened:** 4 days ago by carlwgeorge

<@zodbot:fedora.im>

18:06:30

● **Last Updated:** Never

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:06:49

I did the stuff for this

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:06:59

Oh ... it's already done?

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:07:03

just waiting for nirik to merge it

<@carlwgeorge:fedora.im>

18:07:06

done in the plr sense

<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>

18:07:07

uh...

<@carlwgeorge:fedora.im>

18:07:11

done in the pr sense

<@carlwgeorge:fedora.im>

18:07:34

i created the issue so we could talk about it here

<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>

18:07:38

I have had no time to get back to look, but is this only changing epel10?

<@carlwgeorge:fedora.im>

18:08:06

the decision point i guess do we want to wait until rhel 9.7 so that rhel 9 mirrors have a mergerepo_c that supports zstd

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:08:17

yeah

<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>

18:08:34

I think so...

<@davide:cavalca.name>

18:09:13

!hi

<@zodbot:fedora.im>

18:09:15

Davide Cavalca (dcavalca) - he / him / his

<@carlwgeorge:fedora.im>

18:09:22

i think it's fine to merge now, but also no opposed to waiting a bit longer for that rhel 9 mirror thing

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:09:23

Hi Davide Cavalca

<@carlwgeorge:fedora.im>

18:10:04

if we do the latter, the pr can be adjusted to have epel10.0/10.1 continue to use gzip repodata, and just use zstd repodata for 10.2 going forward

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:10:36

I thought all of 10 already had zstd ... though I could be wrong ...

<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>

18:11:13

epel10 does not. ;)

<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>

18:11:42

(yet)

<@rcallicotte:fedora.im>

18:11:43

the version of createrepo_c in 10 does understand zstd tho...

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:12:07

I would rather just go ahead and land this

<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>

18:12:09

Yes. The problem would be people running rhel9 that want to mergerepos or the like

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:12:30

Ohh ... ok. I see the problem now.

<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>

18:14:06

rhel9 from gz -> xz is probibly fine, but not sure it gets us too much

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:14:28

mainly makes things consistent since right now it's mixed gz xz

<@rcallicotte:fedora.im>

18:14:58

For reference https://issues.redhat.com/browse/RHEL-67689

<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>

18:15:03

sure, and I can't see how it would break someone... but I bet you it will break someone. ;)

<@carlwgeorge:fedora.im>

18:15:19

proposal: keep epel 10.0/10.1 on gz, use zstd for 10.2 going forward (which defers the change until roughly around when rhel9 gets a zstd-capable mergerepo_c)

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:15:40

counter proposal: merge as is and offer a backport for people who need it

<@carlwgeorge:fedora.im>

18:15:47

i agree about making epel9 consistent with epel8 with a switch to xz, but it should be a separate pr

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:16:01

I don't really want to do even more splitting

<@smooge:fedora.im>

18:16:33

i think every release should have its own compression method. it is like a wine flavour to tell which year it is

<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>

18:16:44

+1 Stephen J Smoogen

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:16:49

🤬

<@smooge:fedora.im>

18:17:04

rhel7 should be bz2

<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>

18:17:19

ah, a nice rhel8 7z repodata...

<@salimma:fedora.im>

18:17:28

ahh that was a terrible vintage

<@salimma:fedora.im>

18:17:43

there was too much sunlight that year so the bytes were dry

<@smooge:fedora.im>

18:17:43

hmmm maybe make el8 bz2 then

<@smooge:fedora.im>

18:18:19

anyway I have dropped in my usual "wisdom" to derail a conversation.. Smoogen-Man AWAY!!!!

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:18:19

well I think el6 was bz2 :P

<@salimma:fedora.im>

18:18:59

what an upstart release

<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>

18:19:49

I'd prefer to keep all of 10.x the same... I think it might be confusing to split them...

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:19:51

in all seriousness, I don't really think the mergerepos issue is serious enough to block my pull request, because we have solutions to give people

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:20:09

and it _is_ on track to be fixed in rhel 9.7 proper

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:20:23

pulp ships their own createrepo for Satellite so it doesn't affect them

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:20:25

What is the solution that we can give people?

<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>

18:20:32

There's a copr

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:20:41

there's a copr with an updated createrepo for el9

<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>

18:20:49

but of course this all falls on me/infra when people complain and file tickets and email...

<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>

18:21:01

we can do it if everyone is fine with that, but I reserve the right to be grumpy

<@rcallicotte:fedora.im>

18:22:07

I won't complain anymore I swear

<@carlwgeorge:fedora.im>

18:22:18

we can just backburner this issue until the fall and then switch all epel10 releases to zstd

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:22:26

I'm not feeling good about doing this right before summit, right before RHEL 10.0 is released.

<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>

18:22:36

ha, no it's not you... :) Your complaint was well formed and fine.

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:23:54

If there is an incoming wave of people that are going to be updating from RHEL 9 to RHEL 10 (or their clone equilvelants) and they have problems because their RHEL9 machines can't read epel10 repo's ... that concerns me.

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:24:02

that is not the issue

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:24:11

the only issue is if you want to mangle the repos when you mirror them

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:24:21

every other case works fine even now going back to rhel 8

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:24:42

Oh ... ok. Then I mis-understood the problem.

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:24:58

if you are using mergerepos to mangle and filter stuff, that's where you need at least cs9/rhel9.7 or the copr backport

<@rcallicotte:fedora.im>

18:25:26

Can verify that createrepo 0.20.1-3 and higher in centos stream has zstd support.

<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>

18:26:00

right. so if you run a rhel9 koji for example and use epel as an external repo...

<@nhanlon:beeper.com>

18:28:32

!hi

<@zodbot:fedora.im>

18:28:33

Neil Hanlon (neil) - he / him / his

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:29:14

Hi Neil Hanlon

<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>

18:29:21

so, what do you all want to do here? ;)

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:29:58

I feel that we need to wait till next week, having more of a discussion during the week. ... but that's me.

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:30:05

Either way, I think we need to timebox this.

<@carlwgeorge:fedora.im>

18:30:05

sounds fine

<@carlwgeorge:fedora.im>

18:30:34

to avoid starting from ground zero next week, please leave comments on the issue if you have thoughts on this

<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>

18:30:58

the issue/pr has been open a while... ;)

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:31:14

Oh ... 6 months.

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:31:46

I did this during the bringup time

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:31:59

and then chaotic things happened in life

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:32:45

Well, sorry, but I'm goign to timebox it. As Carl said, please leave comments in the issue so we can start farther along next week.

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:33:06

!epel 328

<@zodbot:fedora.im>

18:33:07

**epel #328** (https://pagure.io/epel/issue/328):**Figure out getting selinux-policy-epel autoinstalled**

<@zodbot:fedora.im>

18:33:07

<@zodbot:fedora.im>

18:33:07

● **Opened:** 3 weeks ago by ngompa

<@zodbot:fedora.im>

18:33:07

● **Last Updated:** 3 days ago

<@zodbot:fedora.im>

18:33:07

● **Assignee:** Not Assigned

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:33:38

I see comments ... would someone like to summarize what has happened this past week on this issue?

<@salimma:fedora.im>

18:34:04

we wanted to tell the upstream to give up right

<@salimma:fedora.im>

18:34:06

it's cursed

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:34:10

yes

<@salimma:fedora.im>

18:34:18

as cursed as my old iptables-epel that I also nuked

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:34:26

even moreso

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:34:32

I thought I saw an upstream ticket asking that.

<@carlwgeorge:fedora.im>

18:35:57

unless i'm misunderstanding this, it seems like petr is amenable to selinux-policy-epel subpackages going into crb like i suggested

<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>

18:35:59

'fraught with peril'

<@salimma:fedora.im>

18:36:43

oh that helps

<@salimma:fedora.im>

18:36:57

so no chicken and egg about repos not enabled

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:37:17

I'm wondering how that will help. Won't there be the same upgrade/installation issues?

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:37:42

nope

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:38:04

because the only case to worry about is whether CRB is enabled or not

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:38:14

and CRB is _already_ required for EPEL

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:38:29

if CRB is not enabled, you get broken dependency and refusal to install

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:38:37

so no EPEL for you without it

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:38:47

Since when?

<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>

18:38:55

what dep is broken there? or you mean in general for many epel packages?

<@carlwgeorge:fedora.im>

18:39:33

since the introduction of crb, we realized that epel packages often have runtime deps on crb packages, so we put in the setup instructions to enable it

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:39:36

You can't get /usr/bin/crb without epel-release installed, and that's how many people enable crb, after epel-release is installed.

<@carlwgeorge:fedora.im>

18:39:57

the crb command isn't in the setup instructions

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:40:11

That doesn't mean that people don't do that.

<@carlwgeorge:fedora.im>

18:40:16

it's really a helper for people that know about it

<@carlwgeorge:fedora.im>

18:40:33

or people that see the scriptlet warning

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:40:35

But the fact is, you CAN install epel-release without crb enabled.

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:40:56

Ya'll are acting like it's a fact that crb is enabled before epel-release.

<@carlwgeorge:fedora.im>

18:41:15

yes, and people do it, and epel maintainers get bugs about missing dependencies and waste time debugging when the problem is not enabling crb first

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:41:31

I'm saying that it will _become_ explicit when people don't do it

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:41:32

Correct

<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>

18:41:38

sadly, 'Requires(reponame)' is not a thing. ;)

<@carlwgeorge:fedora.im>

18:41:40

not acting like it's 100% the case, but it is the documented process

<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>

18:42:24

in this case tho, say someone installs epel-release, doesn't enable crb and installs some epel package that doesn't have any crb requirements... they would just get no selinux policy on it right?

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:42:43

it would take some work to do, but it could also be done, but that's a separate discussion :)

<@carlwgeorge:fedora.im>

18:42:46

yes, and that is what happens now, although it seems that is limited to just 64 packages

<@carlwgeorge:fedora.im>

18:43:25

having the new policy subpackages in crb, and installed by default if crb is enabled, is objectively an improvement over how it works now

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:43:32

I think the biggest of those 64 is mock.

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:43:45

KDE Plasma also fails without CRB

<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>

18:43:58

whats installing by default if crb is enabled again?

<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>

18:44:09

whats installing it by default if crb is enabled again?

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:44:11

conditional dependency on selinux-policy

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:44:27

`Requires: (selinux-policy-epel if selinux-policy)`

<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>

18:45:30

in epel-release?

<@carlwgeorge:fedora.im>

18:46:00

current scenario: selinux-policy-epel, selinux-policy-epel-mls, and selinux-policy-epel-targeted are weak deps that never get pulled in because they're not available at the time epel-release is installed.

<@carlwgeorge:fedora.im>

18:46:00

my suggested scenario: those packages move from epel to crb, so as long as crb is enabled at the time of epel-release install like we have documented, those policy subpackages get installed by default.

<@carlwgeorge:fedora.im>

18:46:00

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:46:46

Have we tested this?

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:47:08

I did.

<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>

18:47:12

if thats a requires there, then it will fail to install epel-release without crb enabled right?

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:47:13

Shouldn't be too hard to test ... I'm just asking before I go do it.

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:47:23

Yes.

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:47:25

OK, cool.

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:47:41

It can't be weak, because then DNF will exclude it forever.

<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>

18:48:16

I predict that all those 'can't install XYZ' bugs will become 'can't install epel-release'. ;)

<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>

18:48:30

(which I suppose is a higher level)

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:48:51

it also is a "point to docs" thing

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:48:56

Honestly, that might make the "can't install XYZ" bugs easier, because they'll all have the same error.

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:49:01

yes

<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>

18:49:06

sure, as are the bugs about not having crb.

<@carlwgeorge:fedora.im>

18:49:38

assuming we move forward with moving those subpackages to crb, the requires vs recommends question would be if we want to move from crb being a documented dependency to a literal hard dependency

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:49:43

Anyway, one thing I like is that if it moves to CRB, then it because a RHEL problem instead of an EPEL problem ... sorta.

<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>

18:49:48

we would need to rework epel-releases crb check a bit

<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>

18:50:16

the post check is useless and can be removed then

<@carlwgeorge:fedora.im>

18:50:32

sounds fine to me

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:51:41

I'm not sure I like making CRB a required thing for epel-release. Several of the most used epel packages have no crb requirements.

<@carlwgeorge:fedora.im>

18:52:06

fwiw, i'm open to other ideas besides moving those packages to crb, just waiting on people to suggest them

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:52:18

well the package could be moved to AppStream :)

<@carlwgeorge:fedora.im>

18:52:30

that certainly won't work with acg levels

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:52:34

or even *gasp* BaseOS :P

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:52:40

Let's say you only want to use htop, or some other small utility, and it's only in epel. enabling crb seems overkill.

<@yselkowitz:fedora.im>

18:52:54

isn't crb already a prerequisite to epel?

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:52:57

yes

<@yselkowitz:fedora.im>

18:52:59

https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/epel/getting-started/

<@dherrera:fedora.im>

18:53:01

it is

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:53:07

No, it is not.

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:53:39

Documentation does not equal rpm dependencies.

<@salimma:fedora.im>

18:53:44

I thought installing epel-release gives you a prominent noti... yeah true

<@salimma:fedora.im>

18:53:57

so it's required but not enforced

<@salimma:fedora.im>

18:54:05

we *can* enforce it with DNF 5 I think

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:54:06

Correct

<@salimma:fedora.im>

18:54:09

but not before that?

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:54:09

the thing is that selinux-policy-epel is necessary for many packages that nobody is going to know

<@salimma:fedora.im>

18:54:16

with dnf 5 we can drop in a config override that enables it

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:54:30

it wouldn't work for this case explicitly

<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>

18:54:40

Could we move the requres to the packages that have actual policy?

<@carlwgeorge:fedora.im>

18:55:20

that's what petr suggested, but that is unworkable because many fedora maintainers say no to epel-specific conditionals in fedora spec files

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:55:36

I really feel like we (EPEL) are being forced to fix a RHEL problem. :(

<@carlwgeorge:fedora.im>

18:55:58

yes, that's exactly the case, this is a rhel change we're having to adjust for

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:56:12

Ah ... ok, it's not totally that ... but as soon as I saw this (and I saw it before ya'll did) I didn't like it.

<@carlwgeorge:fedora.im>

18:56:19

if rhel kept selinux-policy all in one then we wouldn't be dealing with this

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:56:31

which is also what I said they should do

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:56:51

Anyway ... we're close to our time. So I'm going to timebox this as well.

<@carlwgeorge:fedora.im>

18:56:56

proposal: assuming the new policy subpackages move to crb, we have epel-release use conditional recommends (not requires like in the issue)

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:57:13

I'm not against the CRB thing, I'm really not, I'm just looking at it from a different angle I think.

<@carlwgeorge:fedora.im>

18:57:17

that would get them installed if you follow the instructions and turn on crb first, and if you don't do that then you can clean up the mess yourself later

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:57:30

Yep

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:57:50

😦

<@carlwgeorge:fedora.im>

18:57:51

or never clean it up if 1) your desired package has no crb deps and 2) has not selinux policy modules

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:58:04

True

<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>

18:58:04

'contitional recommends' ?

<@salimma:fedora.im>

18:58:14

yeah I move to just make sure people read documentation

<@carlwgeorge:fedora.im>

18:58:19

`Recommends: (selinux-policy-epel if selinux-policy)`

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:58:19

We have only a few minutes left.

<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>

18:58:25

Michel Lind UTC-6: good luck with that.

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:58:25

this would result in a very weird bug reports :/

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:58:33

!topic General Issues / Open Floor

<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>

18:58:36

this would result in very weird bug reports :/

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

18:58:48

Does anyone have anything really important they want to bring up before we need to close?

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

19:00:25

Well, that made things really quiet ...

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

19:00:51

Thank you all for the very good discussions. I'm sure we'll get these various issues figured out / fixed/ working

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

19:01:08

Thank you all for all you do for EPEL and it's community. I'll talk to you next week.

<@dherrera:fedora.im>

19:01:17

thx troy :)

<@rcallicotte:fedora.im>

19:01:22

thanks Troy

<@salimma:fedora.im>

19:01:28

thanks Troy

<@tdawson:fedora.im>

19:01:33

!endmeeting