<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:00:18
!startmeeting EPEL (2024-09-25)
<@meetbot:fedora.im>
18:00:18
Meeting started at 2024-09-25 18:00:18 UTC
<@meetbot:fedora.im>
18:00:19
The Meeting name is 'EPEL (2024-09-25)'
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:00:22
!meetingname epel
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:00:22
!topic aloha
<@meetbot:fedora.im>
18:00:23
The Meeting Name is now epel
<@carlwgeorge:matrix.org>
18:00:35
!hi
<@nhanlon:beeper.com>
18:00:36
!hi
<@zodbot:fedora.im>
18:00:36
Carl George (carlwgeorge) - he / him / his
<@zodbot:fedora.im>
18:00:38
Neil Hanlon (neil) - he / him / his
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:00:48
Hi Carl George and Neil Hanlon
<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>
18:01:05
morning
<@yselkowitz:fedora.im>
18:01:28
!hi
<@zodbot:fedora.im>
18:01:29
Yaakov Selkowitz (yselkowitz)
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:02:21
Morning nirik
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:02:27
Hi yselkowitz
<@salimma:fedora.im>
18:02:56
!hi
<@zodbot:fedora.im>
18:02:58
Michel Lind (salimma) - he / him / his
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:03:11
Hi Michel Lind 🎩 UTC-5
<@dherrera:fedora.im>
18:04:51
!hi
<@zodbot:fedora.im>
18:04:51
Diego Herrera (dherrera) - he / him / his
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:05:00
Hi Diego Herrera
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:05:15
!topic EPEL Issues https://pagure.io/epel/issues
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:05:15
!link https://pagure.io/epel/issues?tags=meeting&status=Open
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:05:33
With a flair and a whooosh ... nothing is there. :)
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:05:38
moving on
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:05:48
!topic EPEL 10
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:05:48
https://hackmd.io/q6TNkYjJT82EtzhlyPGpog
<@carlwgeorge:matrix.org>
18:06:41
i've got nothing new to report. the metalink os dir thing is top of my mind to fix next, just haven't done it yet. people are noticing and reporting it broken.
<@carlwgeorge:matrix.org>
18:07:04
!link https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/issue/12178
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:07:20
We're continuing to grow ... we're over 2100 today ... they only thing that can slow us down is .... s390x being overwhelmed. :)
<@pgreco:fedora.im>
18:07:45
!hi
<@zodbot:fedora.im>
18:07:46
Pablo Sebastian Greco (pgreco)
<@carlwgeorge:matrix.org>
18:07:46
i guess i have one epel10 idea i want to run by folks
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:08:02
Talking of the metalink ... are you going to change the metalink to point to the correct place? Or change the place to be where the metalink points?
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:08:16
Hi Pablo Greco
<@carlwgeorge:matrix.org>
18:08:55
metalink isn't changing, i plan to adjust the push process to not have an os directory, so things align again and mirrormanager regexs can stay the same
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:09:32
I like that the best.
<@carlwgeorge:matrix.org>
18:11:08
here's the idea i mentioned, we're starting to get uninstallable packages. we don't have installability checks in bodhi to warn people, and we don't automatically file fail-to-install bugs like fedora. willit is a nice tool for reactively fixing things, but i'd wager most epel packagers don't know about it.
<@salimma:fedora.im>
18:11:28
there's work behind the scenes to enable installability checks, right?
<@salimma:fedora.im>
18:11:54
I wonder what the blocker is, I'm assuming the CI systems don't have access to RHEL repos
<@carlwgeorge:matrix.org>
18:11:56
that is an ongoing battle that so far has no indication of being solved
<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>
18:12:21
it may be not too hard to add to the FTI scripting. I am not sure.
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:12:22
Quite possible ... for those that are wondering ... here is the epel10 page - https://tdawson.fedorapeople.org/epel/willit/epel10/status-wont-install.html
<@carlwgeorge:matrix.org>
18:13:02
right before we do the official epel10 launch announcement, i would like to go through and untag packages that don't install. it's cool bragging about big numbers in the repos, but i'd prefer not to include ones that don't install. packagers can of course add them back again later, ideally with the dependency problems resolved.
<@carlwgeorge:matrix.org>
18:13:24
basically i'd like to avoid the list of uninstallables getting out of hand, and using a one time manual untag as a step in that direction
<@salimma:fedora.im>
18:13:26
once they are untagged how long would they live before they get GCed?
<@salimma:fedora.im>
18:13:38
and presumably we'll file bugs for any untagged package, right
<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>
18:13:39
it's so typical that there's 3 things trying to do this same thing. :)
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:13:53
Originally, the installation checker blocker was that we didn't have RHEL packages to check with. But we can always use CentOS Stream to check 10.
<@salimma:fedora.im>
18:14:10
yeah, with 10 we should always track Stream, anyway, so that's easier
<@carlwgeorge:matrix.org>
18:14:32
yup, that helps for epel10 branches, just not others like epel10.0 when we get there
<@salimma:fedora.im>
18:14:55
nods. hopefully those have less updates though
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:14:56
Carl George: You have good intentions, but no ... please no. I don't like this "untag everything" while people are still trying to get their dependencies through "3 weeks of waiting"
<@salimma:fedora.im>
18:15:09
I wonder if we should tighten testing requirements for those
<@carlwgeorge:matrix.org>
18:15:11
yeah we always talk about doing this, but no one has done it yet. i glanced at the code and had questions, and at some point would like to pick the brain of someone more familiar with how it runs.
<@carlwgeorge:matrix.org>
18:15:34
i'm not talking about doing it right now.
<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>
18:15:34
!hi
<@zodbot:fedora.im>
18:15:36
Neal Gompa (ngompa) - he / him / his
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:15:43
Hi Conan Kudo
<@carlwgeorge:matrix.org>
18:15:50
again, right before the launch. right before we draw attention to it.
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:16:13
I especially don't like "untag the whole package" when I have one silly sub-package that doesn't have it's dependencies.
<@rcallicotte:fedora.im>
18:16:18
!hi
<@zodbot:fedora.im>
18:16:19
Robby Callicotte (rcallicotte) - he / him / his
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:17:06
I don't care if it's right before the launch. That means while kde doesn't install due to python-nautilus being broken and I haven't had timne to remove the sub-package.
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:17:48
Yep ... hey ... epel10 is available ... but I untagged a critical KDE package, so the KDE desktop is gone.
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:18:01
That's a good headline.
<@salimma:fedora.im>
18:18:21
I was thinking of nautilus-python too. didn't get to do anything yet while I was traveling but pinky swear, I'll take a stab this week before my vacation
<@salimma:fedora.im>
18:18:43
but yeah if we mass-untag things we should at least let people ask for exceptions
<@salimma:fedora.im>
18:19:06
file bugs / untag after 2 weeks if the status is still NEW?
<@carlwgeorge:matrix.org>
18:19:28
can we please not jump to hyperbole? we can certain do impact checks of each thing being untagged, and exclude things case-by-case.
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:19:55
I'm not jumping to hyperbole ... I'm talking about a speicific package, and a specific scenario.
<@carlwgeorge:matrix.org>
18:21:11
we can also mitigate this a bit by implementation. like if we filed packages for all uninstallables, and then the ones that have no maintainer response by the time of launch (assuming it's a sufficient amount of time) get untagged.
<@yselkowitz:fedora.im>
18:21:12
mass untagging isn't helpful, careful human review of the various situations, filing FTI bugs, and making it clear this is still a WIP is the way to handle it
<@carlwgeorge:matrix.org>
18:21:19
we can also mitigate this a bit by implementation. like if we filed bugs for all uninstallables, and then the ones that have no maintainer response by the time of launch (assuming it's a sufficient amount of time) get untagged.
<@carlwgeorge:matrix.org>
18:22:10
regarding the subpackages, i'm ok limited the scope to just builds that have no installable subpackages
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:22:39
I don't really see what you are trying to accomplish? If feels like you are just trying to gloss over EPEL's flaws.
<@carlwgeorge:matrix.org>
18:23:16
having packages in epel that don't install is bad. we can improve on it.
<@yselkowitz:fedora.im>
18:23:32
EPEL 10 isn't supposed to be "finished" at this stage, we're just getting started
<@carlwgeorge:matrix.org>
18:23:36
this isn't about glossing over anything, it's about improving epel overall.
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:23:39
OK, if we limit it to "no installable packages/sub-package" and we give them a reasonable amount of time.
<@jonathanspw:fedora.im>
18:23:41
!hi
<@zodbot:fedora.im>
18:23:43
Jonathan Wright (jonathanspw)
<@jonathanspw:fedora.im>
18:23:47
only here for a few mins in between other things
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:23:58
But if we do that, I want it done for ALL of EPEL, not just EPEL10 ... and I want it as a policy.
<@yselkowitz:fedora.im>
18:24:22
at this stage EPEL 10 should be more lenient
<@carlwgeorge:matrix.org>
18:24:26
never claimed it was. but at the launch announcement, it should be much better shape on uninstallables than it is now.
<@dherrera:fedora.im>
18:24:29
I think a process like this would make sense if we had installability detection on the CI level, but I don't think it's something we have to deal with before that, even less if it will change package maintainer expectatives on how things work
<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>
18:25:07
I think the fedora script makes the most sense... but I'd have to try and recall where/when thats run.
<@yselkowitz:fedora.im>
18:25:45
then set reasonable expectations for the launch announcement. FTI bugs should definitely be filed, but it's far too soon to say something is completely broken and should be removed from EPEL 10
<@carlwgeorge:matrix.org>
18:25:48
i agree on making it an epel wide policy, but it likely won't be feasible to implement across all branches simultaneously. we can make the policy apply to all, but the analysis and untagging would be branch by branch.
<@carlwgeorge:matrix.org>
18:25:58
it literally is
<@pgreco:fedora.im>
18:26:14
I'm not sure it would be "binding", specially for older releases, because users can always opt not to update, or to downgrade the conflict and still install
<@pgreco:fedora.im>
18:26:31
for 10, yeah, it should be as good as possible day 1
<@carlwgeorge:matrix.org>
18:26:34
that's why i didn't say that
<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>
18:26:38
I think a hard policy on FTI is... hard to do well.
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:27:05
That IS what you said ... unless most of us mis-understood you.
<@carlwgeorge:matrix.org>
18:28:03
i specifically said at the launch, not now
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:28:47
Wha .... ok ... so a few week or a month or so from now .... I don't really see much of a difference ... it takes 3 WEEKS to get a dependency through sometimes.
<@salimma:fedora.im>
18:29:16
yeah, I'm undergoing one of those painpoints right now trying to help Kaleb. got hit by a package owned by one of you-know-whos
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:30:47
Carl George: You have many, very good ideas. But this one, I'm digging my feet in and saying no.
<@carlwgeorge:matrix.org>
18:31:28
i thought you said ok if limited to ones with no installable packages?
<@carlwgeorge:matrix.org>
18:31:47
this response
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:32:06
Correct, and I think that would be a very good policy.
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:32:39
But, I also think a minimum of 4 weeks of delay time would be a minumum.
<@carlwgeorge:matrix.org>
18:33:10
so "digging my feet in and saying no" is not actually how you feel (besides be far more agressive than needed when a simple -1 would suffice)
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:33:58
I don't see us being able to get a policy setup, passed, start creating the bugs, giving them a long enough time, before CentOS Stream and EPEL 10 get released.
<@carlwgeorge:matrix.org>
18:34:04
i'm bring up an idea, with a goal of talking through the pros/cons and implementation. if the cons outweigh the pros than that can be reflected in a vote, once we feel we're at that point.
<@carlwgeorge:matrix.org>
18:34:56
that is a reasonable concern, and we can pivot the idea to making it an overall policy that isn't tied to the launch
<@carlwgeorge:matrix.org>
18:35:32
i'm thinking something along the lines of "if none of the packages from your update install, and you don't respond to the fti bug for x weeks, releng reserves the right to untag the update"
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:35:55
Ya ... what I'm really digging my heals in about is tying it to the launch.
<@carlwgeorge:matrix.org>
18:35:55
but we can hash out all the specific wording later
<@carlwgeorge:matrix.org>
18:36:11
that was not clear, so thank you for clarifying
<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>
18:36:43
note that often the fails to install is in a different package than an update...
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:37:18
Ya, I'm not against the policy in general, cuz it really is a problem, not just EPEL10, but the others. EPEL7 was getting really bad, but ... well, we just waited and it went awy.
<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>
18:39:05
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fesco/Fails_to_build_from_source_Fails_to_install/#_package_removal_for_long_standing_ftbfs_and_fti_bugs is the fedora policy
<@carlwgeorge:matrix.org>
18:39:19
i think we've grown far too lax with pushing updates that don't install. part of that our current straight to stable pipeline, but it definitely happens in other epel branches where updates get created and then move to stable automatically a week later.
<@salimma:fedora.im>
18:39:34
yeah, IIRC Adam mentioned we did have a way to test if an update will break something else, but it got turned off a while ago
<@salimma:fedora.im>
18:39:44
because either it's too expensive / there's too many false positives
<@carlwgeorge:matrix.org>
18:40:30
one tip i saw recently (don't remember from who or where) was using a flag on your mockbuild to check it installs locally.
<@carlwgeorge:matrix.org>
18:40:30
`fedpkg mockbuild -- --postinstall`
<@carlwgeorge:matrix.org>
18:40:30
<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>
18:40:36
it's sometimes not obvious...
<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>
18:41:11
sure, but your update could install just fine... but one or more of it's dependent packages is broken and no longer installs.
<@salimma:fedora.im>
18:42:22
probably Fabio
<@carlwgeorge:matrix.org>
18:42:56
also sidetags help if there are lots of packages involved
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:43:33
At this point, for EPEL10, I'm still looking at all the build dependencies ... and while I know install dependencies are important ... they are secondary right now.
<@salimma:fedora.im>
18:43:50
or, for bootstrapping .. being able to turn on bootstrap mode for the entire sidetag is amazing
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:44:02
Though, this whole discussion has got me to update will-it, and I've already fixed 4 of my uninstallable packages.
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:44:52
Ya ... at some point I'm probrubly going to have to get my KDE stuff going in side-tags ... just not right now.
<@rico0098:fedora.im>
18:44:55
!hi
<@zodbot:fedora.im>
18:44:57
Nishant Mishra (rico0098)
<@carlwgeorge:matrix.org>
18:44:59
a good number of the fti bugs i manually filed have been fixed too
<@dherrera:fedora.im>
18:45:01
i incorporated your update on the auto generating workflow ^^
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:45:15
Hi Nishant Mishra
<@carlwgeorge:matrix.org>
18:45:18
and in other cases, at least made the maintainer aware, and led to other request bugs
<@rico0098:fedora.im>
18:45:22
Hey Troy
<@rico0098:fedora.im>
18:45:31
ELN meeting If I am not wrong?
<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>
18:45:56
that was the spam-o-matic thing
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:46:08
Nishant Mishra: Nope, it's the EPEL meeting.
<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>
18:46:14
it needs minor adjustments to work correctly for EPEL, it currently only works for Fedora
<@rico0098:fedora.im>
18:46:25
Ok
<@rico0098:fedora.im>
18:46:35
EPEL yeah
<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>
18:46:42
!link https://pagure.io/releng/blob/main/f/scripts/spam-o-matic
<@rico0098:fedora.im>
18:47:15
EPEL is the one where changes are moved to next release of RHEL?
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:47:17
Nishant Mishra: You are always welcome, but are you here for a certain topic or item?
<@rico0098:fedora.im>
18:47:29
I am just new here
<@rico0098:fedora.im>
18:47:32
Catching up
<@rico0098:fedora.im>
18:47:40
My first EPEL meeting
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:47:40
Nishant Mishra: Nope, that's ELN, and their meetings are on Fridays.
<@nirik:matrix.scrye.com>
18:47:41
spam-o-matic was replaced (IMHO) by the fti script.
<@rico0098:fedora.im>
18:47:49
Aah ok
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:48:00
Nishant Mishra: But you can ask on the #eln:fedoraproject.org channel
<@rico0098:fedora.im>
18:48:13
Ok I will leave then thanks!
<@carlwgeorge:matrix.org>
18:49:34
that's enough epel10 talk, let's move on so people have a chance to do open floor items
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:50:02
Sounds good.
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:50:13
!topic Old Business
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:50:23
Does anyone have any old business.
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:51:55
Wow ... I just saw the time ... it sounds like nobody has any Old Business ... so moving on to Open Floor.
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:52:03
!topic General Issues / Open Floor
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:52:35
Does anyone have anything for Open Floor?
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:54:27
So, it's not really meeting worthy, but since we have time, I created an issue to clean up the front page. Move alot of that stuff to other sections.
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:55:19
I've gotten two pings with people asking where the installation instructions are ... there is clearly a link, but I think due to the other stuff, people are just glossing over it.
<@carlwgeorge:matrix.org>
18:55:57
agreed, i think the only thing that should be on the front page is a short description, a big note pointing at the getting started guide, and the table of contents to reach all the other pages
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:56:31
Ya. It's not a rush, but if nobody else does it, it's something I'll probrubly do when I'm packaged out.
<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>
18:56:33
we need epel.io as a brochure site
<@carlwgeorge:matrix.org>
18:56:48
something like https://carlwgeorge.fedorapeople.org/docs/epel-docs/epel/ (which i haven't finished and need to figure out how to break into smaller parts so we get some benefits sooner rather than waiting for the complete overhaul)
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:57:20
What do you mean by "brochure site" ?
<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>
18:58:05
basically a simple landing page kind of site
<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>
18:58:16
like fedoraproject.org (fka getfedora.org) and fedoraloveskde.org
<@conan_kudo:matrix.org>
18:58:27
they're simple and direct and hard to misunderstand
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:58:49
Ah, ok.
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
18:59:29
Looks like our time is up.
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
19:00:31
Thank you all for the good discussion. Thank you all for all your work for EPEL and the EPEL community, espically on EPEL10.
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
19:00:40
I'll talk to ya'll next week, if not sooner.
<@tdawson:fedora.im>
19:00:54
!endmeeting