Salt: Deprecate or update the copr repo

[zmalone]

https://copr.fedoraproject.org/coprs/saltstack/salt/ is no longer updated, but it is a "Official" SaltStack repo. It should probably either be updated with the latest packages, or the overview page should be updated to note the location of the current supported repos.

[jfindlay]

@zmalone, thanks for the report.

[jfindlay]

CentOS/RHEL packages are now hosted at https://repo.saltstack.com, but we can't deprecate COPR until fedora packages are hosted upstream as well.

[jfindlay]

We also need to do this with the ubuntu PPAs as they are replaced by https://repo.saltstack.com.

[vutny]

@jfindlay So, COPR repo is no longer the source of up-to-date packages for RHEL / CentOS / Scientific Linux / Amazon Linux / Oracle Linux systems, is it right?

But we have a huge section in the docs: https://docs.saltstack.com/en/latest/topics/installation/rhel.html#installation-from-the-community-repository
that describes the installation steps for COPR and EPEL, most of which are no longer valid, because:

• Salt packages were removed from EPEL for RHEL/Centos 5 completely (only salt-api is there for unknown reason)
• RHEL/Centos 6 and 7 packages in EPEL is at _2015.5.8_ version for now, looks little bit outdated and the documentation should apply only for 2015.5 old stable branch, not 2015.8.
• python-jinja2 package is in the base repo of CentOS 7 (server-releases of RHEL)
• EPEL has python-jinja2-26 for RHEL/CentOS 6
• python-tornado is also outdated for RHEL/CentOS 7 too
• python-crypto is up to date for all systems (in EPEL for 6 and 7 releases)

As for me, trying to install from COPR repo is meaningless on those distros. EPEL is almost outdated and contains old stable packages too. I suggest to cut all that documentation section about community repositories from 2015.8 as irrelevant. Maybe edit and move it to 2015.5 with some corrections.

Do you agree? Any objections?

[jfindlay]

@vutny, Our intention with repo.saltstack.com is to provide users with the latest release packages and, eventually, development packages, without supplanting the official distro packages which have been curated by salt package maintainers for the various distros that package salt.

Fedora and RHEL packages are now provided by bodhi/epel/koji by our community maintainer, so we may now finally be able to deprecate COPR altogether, but you are right that the documentation needs to be fixed as well.

[jfindlay]

@vutny, I don't think we should change the docs to discourage users from using distro packages when they're available and reasonably up to date. Many users will prefer to do this anyway at least because it does not incur the penalty of adding another package repository.

[vutny]

@jfindlay Yeah, sounds reasonable.
I've just underlined that for now "installation from community repositories" are only applicable to 2015.5 release, not 2015.8 were the installation steps are described. This may confuse new users.

[jfindlay]

@vutny, Debian testing and EPEL/Fedora packages will be available soon after 2015.8.7 is released.

[bbinet]

@jfindlay what about Debian Wheezy?

[vutny]

@jfindlay Great news! Anyhow, need to update the docs with more relevant info.
By the way, current Debian testing (stretch) has up-to-date packages in its repo.

[jfindlay]

@bbinet, my understanding is that @babilen is planning on getting all current debian packages updated. I am not familiar with this process but I assume it will involve all supported debian releases.

[babilen5]

@bbinet It does involve all supported Debian releases, but I will have to see how easy it is to backport to squeeze.

[vutny]

Okay, I will summarize how I personally see the community repositories.

• Keep https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/saltstack/zeromq4/, at least for git instillations, as it contains relatively up-to-date libs. But it should be maintained properly in this case.
• Orphan and remove completely https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/saltstack/salt/ since we have latest 2015.5 release packages in Fedora main archives for version 22, 23 and Rawhide. EPEL and EPEL-testing packages are also much fresher.
• Maintain https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/saltstack/salt-el5/, because this is the only source of community packages for CentOS/RHEL 5.

For now I believe we can simply get rid of COPR repo for Fedora and RHEL 6/7 to not confuse Salt users. @jfindlay How do you think?

[jfindlay]

Ping @UtahDave.

[uvsmtid]

I just want to clarify status on Fedora 24 (as of now) - it's not immediately clear from the conversation above.

The latest release 2016.3.1 is provided neither by copr nor by repo.saltstack.com.
In fact, Fedora is absent among _all_ distros listed on repo.saltstack.com.

The latest release available by updated default Fedora 24 repository is 2015.5.10 (skipped 2 major releases)!

If there are any community maintainers, how to find their repositories?

[uvsmtid]

I tested the bootstrap script on the latest Fedora 24.
As concerned, the version it installs is indeed old major release 2015.5.10 from the copr repo.

Is there any activity or plan to continue official support for Fedora?

[meggiebot]

@uvsmtid

Apologies for the confusion around Fedora. In our move to Salt creating packages for releases and hosting them on repo.saltstack.com we were hoping the community would maintain the Fedora packages. Since this has not happened we have now decided to officially support Fedora and maintain the packages ourselves.

Currently our go-forward plan is:
- Create Fedora 23 packages for the latest point releases on our supported branches
The 2016.3.2 and 2015.8.11 releases are planned for mid to late July and we will create Fedora 23 packages for these releases. The Fedora packages may not go live with the point releases but will follow shortly after.
- Create Fedora 24 packages for the latest point releases on our supported branches
The 2016.3.2 and 2015.8.11 releases are planned for mid to late July and we will create Fedora 24 packages for these releases. The Fedora packages may not go live with the point releases but will follow shortly after.
- Post new Fedora packages to repo.saltstack.com
We will post the 2016.3.2 and 2015.8.11 packages for Fedora 23 and 24 to repo.saltstack.com. We will not move the old copr packages to repo.saltstack.com.
- Update the boostrap script to point to new Fedora 23/24 packages on repo.saltstack.com
https://github.com/saltstack/salt-bootstrap/issues/898
- Create Fedora packages for Salt releases going forward
We will create Fedora packages for Salt releases going forward on our supported branches and in accordance with our supported OS version policies (which we hope to post soon).

Note that this is subject to change, but it gives you an idea of what to expect going forward.

[meggiebot]

An update on the Fedora packages...

Though we recently released 2016.3.2 and 2015.8.11 we will not be creating Fedora packages for them. We now plan to create Fedora 24 packages for the upcoming Carbon release and Fedora 25 packages in November.

[dmurphy18]

@zmalone @uvsmtid Salt 2016.3.3 has been submitted to Fedora 24 and Rawhide for testing, etc. Please feel free to download and evaluate, providing karma as appropriate.

[tjyang]

@dmurphy18 , I was able to use bootstrap_salt 2016.08.16 to install salt-minion 6.3.3 on Fedora 24 server.
Not sure if I am pulling pkg from your pkg submission

rpm -qi salt-minion |egrep '^Build*|^URL'

Build Date  : Tue 13 Sep 2016 05:09:36 PM EDT
Build Host  : buildvm-19.phx2.fedoraproject.org
URL         : http://saltstack.org/

Thanks for your packaging effort for fedora 24+.

[dmurphy18]

@tjyan salt-minion version 2016.3.3 should is the correct version