Package Unblocking

Description

Packages are sometimes unblocked from Fedora, usually when a package had been orphaned and now has a new owner. When this happens, release engineering needs to "unblock" the package from koji tags.

Action

Find Unblock requests

Unblock requests are usually reported in the rel-eng issue tracker.

Perform the unblocking

First assign the ticket to yourself to show, that you are handling the request.

Discover proper place to unblock

The ticket should tell you which Fedora releases to unblock the package in. Typically it’ll say "Fedora 13" or "F14". This means we need to unblock it at that Fedora level and all future tags. However depending on where the package was blocked we may have to do our unblock action at a different Fedora level.

To discover where a package is blocked, use the list-pkgs method of koji.

$ koji list-pkgs --help
Usage: koji list-pkgs [options]
(Specify the --help global option for a list of other help options)

Options:
  -h, --help         show this help message and exit
  --owner=OWNER      Specify owner
  --tag=TAG          Specify tag
  --package=PACKAGE  Specify package
  --quiet            Do not print header information
  --noinherit        Don't follow inheritance
  --show-blocked     Show blocked packages
  --show-dups        Show superseded owners
  --event=EVENT#     query at event
  --ts=TIMESTAMP     query at timestamp
  --repo=REPO#       query at event for a repo

For example if we wanted to see where python-psco was blocked we would do:

$ koji list-pkgs --package python-psyco --show-blocked
Package                 Tag                     Extra Arches     Owner
----------------------- ----------------------- ---------------- ---------------
python-psyco            dist-f14                                 konradm         [BLOCKED]
python-psyco            olpc2-ship2                              shahms
python-psyco            olpc2-trial3                             shahms
...

Here we can see that it was blocked at dist-f14. If we got a request that was to unblock it before f14, we can simply use the dist-f14 target to unblock. However if they want it unblocked after f14, we would use the earliest dist-f?? tag the user wants, such as dist-f15 if the user asked for it to be unblocked in Fedora 15+

Performing the unblock

To unblock a package for a tag, use the unblock-pkg method of Koji.

$ koji unblock-pkg --help
Usage: koji unblock-pkg [options] tag package [package2 ...]
(Specify the --help global option for a list of other help options)

Options:
  -h, --help  show this help message and exit

For example, if we were asked to unblock python-psyco in F14 we would issue:

$ koji unblock-pkg dist-f14 python-psyco

Now the ticket can be closed.

Verification

To verify that the package was successfully unblocked use the list-pkgs koji command:

$ koji list-pkgs --package python-psyco --show-blocked

We should see the package listed as not blocked at dist-f14 or above:

Package                 Tag                     Extra Arches     Owner
----------------------- ----------------------- ---------------- ---------------
python-psyco            olpc2-trial3                             jkeating
python-psyco                   olpc2-ship2                              jkeating
python-psyco                   olpc2-update1                            jkeating
python-psyco                   trashcan                                 jkeating
python-psyco                   f8-final                                 jkeating
...

We should not see it listed as blocked in dist-f14 or any later Fedora tags.

Consider Before Running

  • Watch the next day’s rawhide/branched/whatever report for a slew of broken deps related to the package. We may have to re-block the package in order to fix the deps.

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