[El] IMPORTANT: Fedora, EPEL and ELGIS

Mathieu Baudier mbaudier at argeo.org
Mon Dec 6 11:25:39 EST 2010


Hello,

we discussed recently on this list how people involved in packaging
activities around FLOSS GIS software for the Enterprise Linux platform
should collaborate.
This was a very appropriate timing, with the life cycle of Enterprise
Linux 6 starting just now.

The goal of this mail is not to reopen the discussion but to summarize
the consensus that was reached, so that it can serve as a reference,
allowing people to make an informed choice about the repositories they
choose to use.
In case there was a misunderstanding, don't hesitate to signal it.

- in general, Fedora packages are the upstream source for Enterprise
Linux packages (be they in the EPEL or ELGIS repos) as is already the
case.

- the ELGIS repos depends on the EPEL repo, they complement it and
sometimes override it

- for EL 5, the GIS packages in EPEL will most probably not be
updated, so the mission of the ELGIS repos is to provide up to date
packages until there is no more interest for them (as will be
discussed on a case by case basis on the ELGIS list)

- for EL 6, the GIS packages will mostly be provided by EPEL. Later on
in the life cycle of the platform, if EPEL doesn't want to keep the
packages up to date, the ELGIS repos may take over as it did for EL 5

- packages that cannot be in EPEL (typically because they require to
update the base platform) can be maintained in the ELGIS Plus repo (it
is expected that there will be very few of them at the beginning of
the EL6 life cycle)

- as was always foreseen, the goal of the ELGIS project is not
primarily to provide packages but also to serve as a knowledge base
for FLOSS GIS software usage on Enterprise Linux. Therefore EL
specific questions related to GIS packages from EPEL are welcome on
this list and information about them will be documented in the other
resources provided by the OSGeo foundation (wiki, trac, etc.) [1].

More generally, as EL users, we always have to struggle with the fact
that our platform is getting "old" with the time (we say "stable"...),
especially in the GIS field where there is so much innovation.
If we can make this platform a reliable and popular platform for GIS,
the upstream projects will pay much more attention to keep their
dependencies stable, and when they have to update them, to make our
life easier with the required upgrades.

There are fields where supporting the current RHEL/CentOS release is a
must. This is up to us that it becomes the case for FLOSS GIS.

We have gone a long way over the last few months.
Thanks a lot to all of you who contributed your expertise and your time!

Cheers,

Mathieu

[1] Packaging specific issues for EPEL packages should of course be
directed to the EPEL list, and general issues about the packaged
software to their related support mechanism.


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