From Fedora Project Wiki


Retired Packages

Summary

Ease the task of removing packages, which were retired and no longer receives updates.

Owner


Current status

Updated packages are present in rawhide and in referenced Copr repository.

Subpackage remove-retired-packages has been submitted to Fedora 35 to allow seamless online upgrades from Fedora 35 to 36.

Detailed Description

This follows the Changes/Fedora-Retired-Packages which was withdrawn. This time I provide a script remove-retired-packages (presented in the package of the same name) which identifies packages retired between N-1 and current (N) version. Alternatively, user can run: 

   remove-retired-packages 32

which will look for packages between Fedora Linux 32 and the current version.

The packages are suggested to be removed one by one, which allows the admin to skip the package and keep it on their machine despite being retired.

Part of this proposal is to change the documentation for the upgrade.

Feedback

See Changes/Fedora-Retired-Packages#Feedback original feedback page

Discussion on devel mailing list prior this proposal.

Benefit to Fedora

  • We suggest users to remove packages that are no longer maintained and may contain security vulnerabilities.
  • We make sure that archaic packages do not break upgrade between two versions of Fedora.

Scope

  • Proposal owners:

Subpackage remove-retired-packages has been created (subpackage of fedora-upgrade).

  • Other developers: N/A (not needed for this Change)
  • Release engineering: N/A (not needed for this Change)
  • Policies and guidelines: N/A (not needed for this Change)

Edit of https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/dnf-system-upgrade/#sect-optional-post-upgrade-tasks - will be done after approval from FESCO.

  • Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)
  • Alignment with Objectives: N/A

Upgrade/compatibility impact

No direct impact.

How To Test

   dnf copr enable msuchy/remove-retired-packages 
   dnf install remove-retired-packages
   remove-retired-packages

User Experience

Packages that are no longer maintained are removed during a distribution upgrade.

Dependencies

None.

Contingency Plan

  • Contingency mechanism: (What to do? Who will do it?) N/A (not a System Wide Change)
  • Contingency deadline: N/A (not a System Wide Change)
  • Blocks release? N/A (not a System Wide Change), Yes/No


Documentation

Documentation for upgrade guide https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/dnf-system-upgrade/#sect-clean-up-retired-packages [Pull Request]

Release Notes

Suggested wording:

Previously a package retired in Fedora Linux has been removed from repositories, but it remains installed on a user computer. Such packages never receive an update. Not even a security update. We now provide package remove-retired-packages with the tool of the same name which suggests you to remove such packages. The upgrade guide has been amended with steps how to remove retired packages. It is as easy as: 

   sudo dnf install remove-retired-packages
   remove-retired-packages
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