Bug#936806: koji: Python2 removal in sid/bullseye

[Sandro Tosi]

On Fri, Jan 31, 2020 at 1:06 PM Marek Marczykowski-Górecki
<marmarek at invisiblethingslab.com> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Jan 30, 2020 at 05:40:55PM -0800, Mike Miller wrote:
> > On Thu, Jan 30, 2020 at 01:36:33 -0500, Sandro Tosi wrote:
> > > yep i came across all of them starting from python-lzma -- do you know
> > > what's the status of the "RedHat infrastructure" in debian? many (if
> > > not all) of those tools are relatively old, not maintained (or just in
> > > life support mode) and most of all, python2 with no port to python3
> > > available
> >
> > Yeah. I was responsible for some of these, but put them up for adoption
> > about a year ago. You've about captured the status, all rpm-related
> > packages in Debian are old, unmaintained, Python 2 only. Updating to
> > Python 3 ports of mock and koji need dnf, yum is abandonware.
> >
> > I've seen a couple threads about packaging dnf (likely not archived),
> > but so far no one has committed enough to file an ITP.
> >
> > There _is_ an ITP for createrepo-c (#912338), a C-only reimplementation,
> > also a koji dependency, but looks like it may have stalled.
>
> Adding a bunch of people from Fedora, involved in reproducible builds
> before. And also adding Simon, who can help with some of this.
>
> A little context: Currently Fedora build tools packages in Debian are
> mostly unmaintained. This makes it difficult to have cross-distribution
> cooperation, for example Debian developers with a lot of experience in
> reproducible builds helping with reproducibility of Fedora packages.
> If I understand correctly, it is also one of the things needed to revive
> Fedora reproducibility testing on https://tests.reproducible-builds.org.
>
> This is about dnf, mock, koji and createrepo-c - and their dependencies
> (if any missing in Debian).
>
> Simon can do some packaging, but will need help with finding
> maintainers for them, and possibly also packaging some of the
> dependencies - if there are many of them missing.

I sympathize with the willingness to have cross-distributions
collaboration for the reproducibility goal, but looking from a Debian
perspective (and in particular for the python2 removal effort), i cant
help but wonder what is the value of keeping this set of packages
(yum, koji, createrepo, mock, yum-utils; to name only the top-level
ones) in debian _at all_.

should we just remove them (as in RM to ftp.d.o) and let them be
reintroduced, gradually and if interest arises again, at a later time?
This would be my preferred option, given it removes outdated tools
from Debian and allows progress for the py2removal, but i also want to
hear what y'all think

Cheers,
-- 
Sandro "morph" Tosi
My website: http://sandrotosi.me/
Me at Debian: http://wiki.debian.org/SandroTosi
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sandrotosi