Turn off modular dnf repos by default

This is a proposed Change for Fedora Linux.
This document represents a proposed Change. As part of the Changes process, proposals are publicly announced in order to receive community feedback. This proposal will only be implemented if approved by the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee.

Summary

This change is to no longer enable the yum modular repos in Fedora installations by default.

Owner

Name: Jens Petersen
Email: <petersen@redhat.com>

Current status

Targeted release: Fedora Linux 39
Last updated: 2023-05-10
[<will be assigned by the Wrangler> devel thread]
FESCo issue: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>
Tracker bug: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>
Release notes tracker: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>

Detailed Description

The main motivation for this change is to improve the everyday user experienced speed of dnf. dnf invocations frequently check for and pull down last repo metadata and the yum modular repos which are seeing less use and content nowadays have been exasperating this UX problem. The proposed solution is just not to install the Fedora modular repo configurations any more by default.

Feedback

Some initial discussions: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org/thread/FOTOBY5IU32NWW6LT24DWUS6747WV4TP/

Benefit to Fedora

This change will improve the user experience when updating or installing packages since the less-used yum modular repos will no longer be turned on by default for all users.

Scope

Proposal owners:
- update F39 comps @core group to not install fedora-repos-modular by default
- update fedora-container-base.ks to not install fedora-repos-modular
- update fedora-common-ostree-pkgs.yaml to not install fedora-repos-modular
- propose Fedora coreos also drops fedora-repos-modular

Other developers:
- Spin owners may want to check on any possible impact on their release artifacts

Release engineering: #Releng issue number

Policies and guidelines: N/A (not needed for this Change)

Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)

Alignment with Community Initiatives:

Upgrade/compatibility impact

Any existing modular repos will remain in place and updated normally. This is also the reason for not changing the modular.repo files themselves, since disabling the modular repos by default their would cause upgrades to turn off modular repos.

How To Test

run dnf upgrade commands etc and check that modular repos are not active, ie modular repo metadata not checked/downloaded.
check that fedora-repos-modular is not pre-installed.

User Experience

Users of new Fedora installations will no longer have the Fedora modular repos setup and enabled by default, resulting in a noticeable speed up executing dnf commands. They can install fedora-repos-modular to active the modular repos on their system.

Dependencies

None

Contingency Plan

Contingency mechanism: (What to do? Who will do it?)
- Change owner(s) will revert the changes and re-enable the modular repos as needed
Contingency deadline: beta freeze
Blocks release? No

Documentation