Mock for EPEL4 with broken deps for ages

[Michael Schwendt]

On Mon, 9 Aug 2010 11:51:50 -0600, Kevin wrote:

> On Mon, 9 Aug 2010 14:57:14 +0200
> Michael Schwendt <mschwendt at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > https://bugzilla.redhat.com/550448
> > 
> > Could somebody from the EPEL project leaders please explain this?
> 
> Thats sad. :( 
> 
> I remember long ago using mock on el4, so I don't know when it broke,
> but I am pretty sure it worked at one point. ;( 
> 
> So, yes, we should remove this package or they should fix it to work on
> EL4. It's quite disappointing that they were shipping it broken with
> bug filed all this time. 
> 
> Does it really need python 2.4? 
> Or would something like python-kitchen help?
> 
> I'll ask that on the bug. 

Here's info about the package life-time,

  mock-0.7.2-1.el4.1
  http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=108451
  built on 2009-06-20 (probably when koji was populated for epel)
  but as old as 2007 according to the spec %changelog

and bodhi knows about a version upgrade directly to 1.0.1, introducing
the Python 2.4 dependency five months later:

  mock-1.0.1-1.el4 bugfix update
  https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/mock-1.0.1-1.el4
  Date Released:  	2009-12-01 17:49:47
  Details
    Fix creation of root cache tarballs
  Bugs Fixed
    540997 - Intermittent errors creating mock root cache tarball
    ^^^^^^
    ^^
    ^
That's for a Fedora 12 bug report. The proposed final patch replaces just
a few lines.  No EPEL4 specific bugs mentioned. Not even the jump from
0.7.2 to 1.0.1 was warned about.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL/GuidelinesAndPolicies#Package_maintenance_and_update_policy

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL/FAQ#How_does_Fedora_Project_ensure_the_quality_of_the_packages_in_EPEL.3F

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL/FAQ#How_long_are_EPEL_packages_updated.3F

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL/FAQ#How_can_we_be_sure_that_someone_will_maintain_the_packages_until_end_of_life_of_the_distribution_the_packages_were_built_for.3F

Hmmm... a clever combination of FAQs.