epel task force? (was: Re: EPEL Meeting: Call for Topics)

[Thorsten Leemhuis]

On 04.02.2008 18:24, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
> Any topics for the next meeting?
> 
> RT3

Xavier seems to do a good in that area. Thx for that Xavier!

> [...]
> What else can be done?

RHEL5 is now 11 months old iirc, so RHEL6 is still likely more then one
year away. That seems a long time, but on the other hand I suppose that
means we'll have the first beta in about 6-9 months and we need to start
preparing EPEL6 then.

I'd wondering if we should soon start with a preparation for the EPEL6
preparation by  reconsidering to realize a old EPEL idea.

What I want to say is: When EPEL did its baby steps there was the idea
to form a "EPEL task force" (or what did we call it?): a dedicated group
of people interested in EPEL that helps Fedora owners when they need
help. Here is a example to explain the idea behind that group:

- Fedora owner wants to see his package in EPEL, but has no EL release
and no interest to run centos in a VM

- Fedora owner nevertheless builds his package in EPEL; the EPEL task
force (as a group, not as a individual) becomes comaintainer

- if needed (e.g. in case of EPEL specific bugs or a urgent update that
needs to be tested to quickly get it moved from testing to stable) the
Fedora maintainer yells "EPEL task force, please help".

- someone from the "EPEL task force" helps

Such a concept could help a lot when EPEL6 gets prepared. We could look
out for the subset of rawhide packages that we'd really like to have in
EPEL6. Then mail the package owners that are not participating in EPEL
yet and tell them something like "RHEL6 is nearly the same as the 'core'
of Fedora right now, so it's the perfect time to build you Fedora
package in EPEL6; chances are quite big that it'll just build without
any modifications. If you want you can ask the EPEL Task Force to become
official comaintainer; the guys from the task force can then later help
if you need help with EPEL-specific problems".

The same concept liekly has benefits for EPEL4 and EPEL5 as well, but
the more Fedora moves on it becomes different from RHEL; as a result it
becomes harder for people to adjust a Fedora package for EPEL. That's
why getting lots of Fedora packages into EPEL6 when RHEL6 ships seems to
be important to me.

Just a idea and just my 2 cent.

Cu
knurd