Policy for retiring packages?

[Axel Thimm]

On Wed, Jul 04, 2007 at 08:11:06AM -0700, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
> On Wed, 2007-07-04 at 14:59 +0200, Axel Thimm wrote:
> > do we have such a thing? How do old packages get recycled? Any way
> > to predict packages being deleted from the repo?
> > 
> > (this is important for 3rd party repo yum support, especially in the
> > kernel and kmdl area)
> 
> AFAIK we have policy for what to do but not a policy on when it can
> happen.  I think the policy is spread out on these three pages::
> 
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageMaintainers/PackageEndOfLife
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageMaintainers/RetiredPackages
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageMaintainers/OrphanedPackages
> 
> -Toshio

OK, so there are some policies to be consolidated. But whop is
currently enforcing them? E.g. who decides when the kernel package is
retired? And more to the point of interest: Would there be a way to be
notified that a package was retired?

The background is that ATrpms and other repos support Fedora kernels
by providing kernel module packages. These are depending on the kernel
they were built for.

While for non-kernel packages one could always just support the latest
found in the repo, for kernels one needs to support at least the last
two, sometimes even more (for example when 2.6.19 went 2.6.20 the last
2.6.19 was for some time the only kernel some users could use).

So ATrpms decided to support *all* kernels in updates-released, but
this leads to yum breakage when such a kernel is removed and yum
detects packages that require a not-anymore existing package.

Therefore I need to know when the kernels are retired, best by a
notfiying mail, so I can purge the old kmdls from the repo before yum
barfs on users' machines.

Alternatively someone could give yum some love to not do that (apt and
smart don't FWIW, but they aren't the default depsolver either).
-- 
Axel.Thimm at ATrpms.net
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