How to remove a package at end of life

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When a package reaches the end of its useful life, the following procedure will let other people -- and automated processes! -- know both not to expect any more releases, and why it was removed. The process is called retirement.

Procedure

Retire only in development/EPEL branches!
Do not retire packages in other branches than Branched (until the Final Freeze), Rawhide (master) and EPEL branches (el5, el6, epel7). When you need to add package from EPEL to any RHEL release, only retire EPEL branch when package is released in that RHEL release.

Please execute the following steps in the order indicated.

RPM

If the package is being replaced by some other package, ensure that the Obsoletes/Provides tags are properly set by the new package, see Renaming/Replacing Guidelines.

GIT

Run fedpkg retire DESCRIPTION in all non-stable Fedora branches and EPEL branches, if applicable. The retiring needs to start with the oldest branch (e.g. retire on f25 before you retire on master)

Remarks

• The DESCRIPTION parameter should explain why the package was retired, good messages are:
  • Obsoleted by bar
  • Renamed to bar
• The command will remove all files from the branch, add a file name dead.package containing the description and push the changes. Starting with fedpkg 1.13 it will also retire the package in package DB.
• git rm all files in the other branches only if there are special factors at work, like licensing issues, or package being removed completely from Fedora.
• If you retired master before other older branches you want to retire, just continue with the older branches. It will still work, but will block the package in more Koji tags, because tag inheritance will not be used automatically then.

Package DB

Ensure that the package is marked as retired in the package database system. This should happen automatically with fedpkg 1.13 and newer if you provide your FAS credentials. If it failed, you can retire the package with the following command:

   pkgdb-cli orphan --retire PACKAGENAME master

Remarks

• After the package was retired in package DB, you will not be able to commit changes to GIT. Therefore clean up GIT first.
• Change master to the respective branch
• Start with the oldest branch

Comps

Remove the package from comps if it is listed.

Spins

Remove the package from any spin kickstart file fork fedora-kickstarts and check out your clone. commit any fixes and send in a Pull Request

   git clone ssh://git@pagure.io/path/to/fork/fedora-kickstarts.git

Upstream Release Monitoring

Remove the package from Upstream_release_monitoring if it is listed.

Koji

To keep retired packages from being pushed to the mirrors, they need to be blocked in koji. This will happen during the next Rawhide/Branched compose (also for EPEL). If it did not happen file a ticket for rel-eng (component koji) and mention the package name and the branch the package needs to be blocked.

Remarks

• Please wait long enough before opening a ticket to avoid unnecessary work.
• Use one ticket for all packages you retired at once, do not open one ticket for each package if you retired several packages.
• You check whether a package is blocked in koji, e.g. for the package curry there should the a entry with [BLOCKED] for each branch the package was retired in. It is enough for a package to be retired in an older tag to be also blocked in a newer tag due to inheritance:

$ koji list-pkgs  --show-blocked --tag f21 --package curry                               
Package                 Tag                     Extra Arches     Owner          
----------------------- ----------------------- ---------------- ---------------
curry                   f20                                      gemi            [BLOCKED]

EPEL

Note that you can use this process for EPEL as well with one difference:

• You can remove the package from any EPEL branch whether or not it has been released.

For example, if your package has been added to base RHEL in RHEL-6.4 then perform the steps above but use the el6 branch instead of master.

Unretire a Package

See Orphaned_package_that_need_new_maintainers

Obsoleting Packages

While not strictly part of the process, please consider what will happen to systems which have the now-retired packages installed. Generally such packages will simply remain on the system as it is updated, becoming increasingly outdated.

Please follow relevant packaging guidelines here if another package will be providing similar or identical functionality to the retired package, or if it is necessary that the package be removed from end-user systems on system updates.