On Mon, Jan 06, 2014 at 11:54:01PM +0100, Mauricio Tavares wrote: > It seems a lot of them were not created for EPEL 6 and 7 (see > https://apps.fedoraproject.org/packages/qemu-system-arm as an > example). I take that means the current maintainer is up to his nose > in projects. How can I be equal parts lazy ass and selfish SOB and > volunteer to be a co-maintainer to that family of packages? https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Join_the_package_collection_maintainers?rd=PackageMaintainers/Join However ... you have picked possibly the most complex package in EPEL. Read on. [This covers a lot of Red Hat Enterprise Linux specific details, but they are IMHO necessary to understand what's going on in EPEL.] - Qemu ships in base RHEL >= 5.4 - It might not be called qemu. In RHEL 6 it's called 'qemu-kvm' (for no particularly good reason). - qemu-kvm in RHEL removes a lot of features which we (Red Hat) don't believe are stable enough for our customers to use. Not just whole binaries like qemu-system-arm, but many emulated devices and block device drivers. - qemu-kvm in RHEL (6+) moves qemu binaries to /usr/libexec because Red Hat's customers are not supposed to run it directly (but use it via libvirt). - EPEL has a policy about shipping packages that are also present in RHEL (or upgrading packages which are in RHEL), which is that it shouldn't be done: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL/FAQ#Does_EPEL_replace_packages_provided_within_Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux_or_layered_products.3F https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL/FAQ#How_can_I_know_which_packages_are_part_of_RHEL.3F However EPEL 5 & 6 has an (outdated) package called 'qemu'. Obviously that's not called 'qemu-kvm' so it's not strictly breaking any policies ... and maybe we *should* break the policy in this case. The current 'qemu' package in EPEL 6 coexists with 'qemu-kvm' by having a different name and putting binaries in a different place. (Not sure which binaries libvirt will use.) However it's a messy situation, so tread carefully. Rich. -- Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones Read my programming blog: http://rwmj.wordpress.com Fedora now supports 80 OCaml packages (the OPEN alternative to F#) -- devel mailing list devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
