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EPEL-8 Packaging Procedures

Introduction

When a new Red Hat Enterprise Linux occurs, one of the steps to get EPEL going for it is branching of various packages into new namespace. The EPEL Steering Committee does not mass branch all existing packages into the namespace because it has caused multiple problems:

The package maintainers did not want to support the package in the newer version of EPEL. Package maintainers may only want to support certain versions of Enterprise Linux or may want to wait until their favourite derivative appears.
The package does not work in the latest version of RHEL. With multiple years between releases, software which worked on Fedora 18 which would branch to EPEL-7 may not exist anymore with Fedora 28 and EPEL-8 would need a completely different version.

Consumer request for packages

People who are interested in getting packages into EPEL should contact the package maintainer through bugzilla. This allows for the requests to be tracked and if the primary maintainer is not interested in branching to EPEL, other ones can step in and do so.

EPEL Next

EPEL packages are built against RHEL. EPEL Next is an additional repository that allows package maintainers to alternatively build against CentOS Stream. This is sometimes necessary when CentOS Stream contains an upcoming RHEL library rebase, or if an EPEL package has a minimum version build requirement that is already in CentOS Stream but not yet in RHEL. EPEL Next has its own distgit branches, koji build targets, and bodhi releases.

EPEL Next packages have .next appended to the disttag (e.g. a disttag of .el8.next for epel8-next) to provide an upgrade path from an EPEL package that was built from the same distgit commit. A package maintainer can rebuild the same commit for both EPEL and EPEL Next and get two different NVRs in koji. Within six months, the build requirement necessitating building in EPEL Next should be in RHEL, and at that time the package maintainer can do a normal release bump commit in the EPEL branch and get a newer NVR than both the previous EPEL and EPEL Next packages.

To get started with EPEL Next, request the corresponding branch for the EPEL release you are targeting, e.g. request an epel8-next branch to rebuild an epel8 package against CentOS Stream 8. Once the branch is created you can merge commits from other branches and submit a build just like you would for other EPEL or Fedora branches.

EPEL Playground

EPEL Playground was shut down in January 2022

EPEL 8 Playground was a place that developers and maintainers could "play around" with updated, or changed packages in epel. EPEL Playground never really worked out and ended up being more burden than helpful.

If developers or maintainers want something similar to EPEL Playground we recommend Fedora COPR, which has availability for EPEL builds.

Developer request for branching multiple packages

Branching is handled the same way as requesting a branch using fedpkg request-branch. A maintainer can request an epel8 branch using fedpkg request-branch epel8 which will create a ticket in https://pagure.io/releng/fedora-scm-requests/issues and Release Engineering will process these requests.

To branch multiple packages please use this or a variant of this script:

#!/usr/bin/sh
# Reminder to get an updated pagure token for releng tickets
# Usage: epel-8.sh foo bar goo blah blech
if [ $# -lt 1 ]
then
    echo "At least one package name should be provided"
else
    TMPDIR=`mktemp -d /tmp/epel8.XXXXXX`
    pushd "$TMPDIR"
    for pkg in "$@"
    do
        fedpkg clone "$pkg"
        pushd "$pkg"
        fedpkg request-branch epel8
	    fedpkg request-branch epel8-playground
        popd
    done
    rm -rfv "$TMPDIR"
fi

Releng will then work through the tickets in the system which is adding branches to the PDC and src.fedoraproject.org.

Known Issues

/usr/bin/python does not exist. Choose /usr/bin/python3 or /usr/bin/python2 and patch appropriately.
python2-sphinx is not shipped. Most packages should work with python3-sphinx, and if it doesn't please open a bug. The python team has been good about making fixes for this.
When branching python packages, be aware that python in EL-8 is python36 and not the version currently in rawhide. This has come up with a couple of test packages where they assumed python37 or later.
systemd-rpm-macros is not a separate packages. If needed, used BuildRequires: systemd
While EL-8 comes with platform-python, it should NOT be used in Requires: unless absolutely neccessary. python3 should be used instead. (Exceptions can be made but will be rare and need justification.)

Accepted Exceptions:

Use python3.6dist(coverage) instead of python3-coverage. This package is not shipped but is needed in %check code.

Sometimes RHEL8 only has a python3 package for a dependency you need for your build. (Example: python-bleach requires python2-html5lib, but RHEL8 provides only python3-html5lib). For EPEL-8.0 we only suggest one choice:

Choose not to have the python2 part of your package and patch whatever to use python3.

Python2 packages are discouraged. RHEL-8 will contain python2.7 until probably the end of life of RHEL-7. However support upstream will only be minimal. When modularity occurs, we suggest that you make whatever python2 packages modules which can be pulled out when RHEL-8.N no longer has python2.
While a RHEL src.rpm might produce a -devel package, it may not currently be in the build repository. When running into this please open a ticket with https://pagure.io/epel/new_issue for us to put in a request for it to be added to Red Hat's Code Ready Builder. After modularity is enabled, changes to what is done will be needed.
EPEL-8.0 may not work with the RHEL-8.1 beta. There seem to be changes in dnf and zchunk which we have not worked out. This line will be updated.

Definitions

Package maintainer. Person who has accepted responsibility to package and maintain software in the Fedora Project ecosystem. The main packager is usually someone focused on Fedora Linux, and secondary packagers may be focused on particular use cases like EPEL.
Consumer. A person who has subscribed to EPEL for packages but is not a maintainer.
PDC. Product Definition Center. A tool to help list the lifetime and permissions that a product has so that branching and updates can be better managed.

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