[CentOS-devel] Shipping an EPEL release

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 09/13/2012 08:49 PM, Johnny Hughes wrote:
> On 09/13/2012 10:32 AM, Karanbir Singh wrote:
>> hi guys,
>>
>> One bit of feedback at LinuxCon this year from people was that we should
>> ship epel with a lower barrier to entry. And I have mixed feelings about
>> that. But I wanted to know what everyone else thinks about :
>>
>> 1) Shipping epel-release in CentOS-Extras, so its installable, usable
>> out of the box.
>>
>> 2) Shipping epel-release in the distro itself, with the epel repos's
>> enabled=false. This is the option that most people seem to want, but I
>> am least keen on.
>>
>> 3) do nothing, leave things as they are.
>>
>> Ofcourse, if we do either (1) or (2) we would need to set some sort of a
>> baseline standard that allows other repo's to be included as well ( as +
>> if they meet the baseline standard )
>>
>> regards,
>>
> I think that we should not include those repos by default.  If we do, we
> now have to worry if they change their release files, etc.
Not at all. Once you include ONE version of the $repo-release file, it 
would get upgraded automatically once the repo is enabled. We should 
only care if the change(s) become incompatible. Of course, for 
convenience/courtesy we could/should upgrade the $repo-release once it 
gets upgraded "upstream". Especially as it's a piece of cake to do.


>
> I surely would not want it in the main distro ... maybe in extras.
I am 100% in agreement with that. [base] should only contain what the 
upstream distro ships. but [extras] fits the bill perfectly, according 
to its current definition


> But
> I don't see that as much of an advantage unless we have it enabled by
> default.
Disabling the repo brings only additional headaches. I already see the 
questions in IRC: "I've installed the release rpm but I still can not 
install any package from the repo. Why is that ?"

>    If we do this, we will have to maintain a release file for the
> repos that is different from their own release files.
Why is that ?? We do not need to sign them. We just ship them unaltered. 
Those who do not trust the centos mirrors should go to the upstream 
mirrors and download from there. We do not assume any other 
responsibility but to provide a convenient way to retrieve THIS(these) 
package(s). Nothing else.


>    This will render
> the documentation that they have on their websites in error OR require
> them to change it and make it different for CentOS as compared to RHEL
> (that is, you must enable it if you isntalled it from here, but not if
> you installed it from us, etc.)
>
> I see no reason to include this in CentOS unless what we include is
> exactly what is released by the repo itself, so that it works the same
> whether installed by our repo or theirs.
Exactly . Ship the current $repo-release in centos-extras. Similar to 
what SL does for several repos and to what IUS does for EPEL as well.