Fedora 31 To Start Removing Python2-Only Packages & Other Changes Approved

At Monday's weekly Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) meeting, a number of changes pertaining to Fedora 31 were approved.

First up, the "mass Python 2 package removal" was okay'ed by FESCo. This change is about continuing what started during Fedora 30 and is about tracking and removing packages that still depend on Python 2 if it looks like they won't be ported soon to Python 2. Python 2 is reaching end-of-life on 1 January 2020 and thus a final push to get packages over the porting line to Python 3 otherwise dropping them, at least until the upgrades have been made.

Another major change that was previously brought up is gating packages while they are being tested in trying to ensure a more stable Rawhide experience by not letting packages into the repository/archive until they have passed their respective test cases. FESCo approved this on an opt-in basis for Fedora 31 packages.

Meanwhile for the current Fedora 30 cycle they have approved Zchunk meta-data support being re-enabled. Zchunk can offer some compression/performance gains for F30 RPM package meta-data.