On Mon, Mar 6, 2023 at 8:48 PM Carl George carl@redhat.com wrote:
On Fri, Mar 3, 2023 at 5:42 AM Daniel P. Berrangé berrange@redhat.com wrote:
There is also the case of the RHEL rebuilds whose users consume EPEL packages. Depending how quick they are, the rebuild distros might not have their 9.2 rebuild ready for some days/weeks/months after RHEL-9.2 is first available. My projects' upstream CI is all based on AlmaLinux and I don't want to see it broken again by premature capstone retirement from EPEL.
Historically, when CentOS was a rebuild, many EPEL maintainers would wait for corresponding CentOS rebuild release before changing their EPEL packages to work on RHEL. This was true both for soname rebuilds and retirements. CentOS would usually take about a month to catch up to RHEL minor versions. The new rebuilds are doing much better in this area. Alma is routinely getting their minor versions out 1-2 days after RHEL. The other rebuilds aren't far behind. If we were to delay package retirements, I don't think it's necessary to delay for more than a few days.
Do you mean "a few days after both Alma and Rocky are up to the latest release." or "a few days after RHEL is released."?
If you mean "a few days after RHEL is released." then I have to disagree with you. It does no harm to leave the packages in EPEL for a few weeks/months. It does harm to rip the packages out too early.
Troy