On Sunday 18 March 2007, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:

I (and some other EPEL SIG members afaics) don't care much about using one or not. But afaics the use of a repotag is unwanted in Fedora-land up to now afaics.

If the answer from the PC is "yes, EPEL is free to use a repotag" then please decide how to actually use it -- Add a "repotag" macro defined by the buildsys or overload %{dist}, ...

My .02€: as a user of an enterprise distro, using several repos which ship the same software in slightly different packages is most definitely something I wouldn't do (at least without actively taking care of overlaps myself eg. with explicit per-repo exclusions/inclusions in depsolver configs, and accepting the blame if it blows up on me). Repotag seems to encourage such repo mixing somewhat, which is why I'm slightly leaning against it. Or put another way, I really don't care because I think if I'm in a situation where repotags between repos start to matter at all, I should sanity check my setup before doing anything else.

But if there is a "repotag", it needs to be placed in the release tag in a way that it doesn't affect version comparisons between package releases (within a repo). Just defining %{dist} eg. as .elX.epel wouldn't work as %{dist} is optional, but defining eg. %{repo} and making its usage rules the same as %{dist}'s (except if dist is there too, repo needs to come directly appended to it) could work.

On Sun, Mar 18, 2007 at 03:17:13PM +0100, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:

I'd like to ask the Packaging Committee (which afaics is responsible for the Packaging standards used in Fedora projects, which includes EPEL) for advice and a formal decision about using a repotag in EPEL.

We do need a mandate, but that's in the works, so let's assume the FPC is empowered and willing (I am, I can't speak about the rest of the members) to define EPEL guidelines as well.

There are a lot of people strongly urging to use one

I (and some other EPEL SIG members afaics) don't care much about using one or not. But afaics the use of a repotag is unwanted in Fedora-land up to now afaics.

If the answer from the PC is "yes, EPEL is free to use a repotag" then please decide how to actually use it -- Add a "repotag" macro defined by the buildsys or overload %{dist}, ...

Technically, if EPEL gets a repotag it should be via %dist, so that no specfile using %dist will need to be touched. Furthermore it would have to be something like say ".el5.epel" or similar to fit the usual <buildid>.<disttag>.<repotag> structure.

The topic is a bit political as it influences the releationship between EPEL and other 3rd party RHEL supporters. Furthermore we don't even have a *disttag* *mandatory* for FC because there are different views withing the contributor body (inner politics if you like).

I think the general repotag issue needs to be solved by EPEL (whether there will be one or not). We are trying to focus on purely technically oriented topics and avoid any political decisions, e.g. what software is allowed to be packaged, the range of licenses allowed, the firmware policy and so on are mostly input for us (there is a two way communication to fesco, of course) and we outline the policies.

So if *the EPEL wants* a repotag we'll be able to shape it into guidelines. If it doesn't we'll write that down as well. But we'd probably not decide on whether EPEL marks their packages or not and thus potentially create political issues between EPEL and other repos by the feather of the FPC.