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

[Neal Gompa]

On Fri, Jan 31, 2020 at 2:27 PM Sandro Tosi <morph at debian.org> wrote:
>
> 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
>

Hello,

It should generally be quite easy to switch everything over to Python
3 equivalents.

Koji and Mock have supported Python 3 for a few years now.

And of course, createrepo_c does not require Python, though does
provide Python 3 bindings. In Fedora, Mageia, and openSUSE,
createrepo_c has fully replaced createrepo (Obsoletes + Provides, or
Replaces + Provides in Debian parlance).

As for yum and yum-utils, their replacements are dnf and
dnf-plugins-core (which have subpackages yum and yum-utils
respectively to act as legacy interfaces).

My understanding is that Mihai Moldovan was working on this for Debian
for the past few months. Mihai worked with me upstream in the DNF
project to get things adapted nicely for Debian packaging in a
reasonable way. I've added Mihai to the thread to allow him to
participate.

Mihai, would you care to chime in on your progress?



-- 
Neal Gompa (FAS: ngompa)