EPEL Testing

The epel-testing repository contains updates scheduled to be released for the maintained releases of EPEL. User testing and feedback provided via Bodhi, on the epel-devel mailing list and the relevant Bugzilla is vital to ensure that good updates are released quickly and bad ones kept away from release.

Using the epel-testing repository

Enabling the repository persistently

The following command will enable the epel-testing repository persistently.

$ dnf config-manager --set-enabled epel-testing

Use dnf repolist to verify. If you wish to disable it again, run the following command.

$ dnf config-manager --set-disabled epel-testing
dnf distro-sync will sync the packages to the versions available in the repository. This might be useful to run after you disable the testing repository to downgrade packages back to the stable versions.
The dnf config-manager command is available as part of the dnf-plugins-core package. You can also edit the /etc/yum.repos.d/epel-testing.repo file manually to set enabled=1 under the [epel-testing] section.

Enabling the repository temporarily

You can enable the the epel-testing repository on a case-by-case basis instead of persistently.

The following command will enable the epel-testing repository for a single upgrade transaction.

$ dnf --enablerepo epel-testing upgrade

The following command will enable the epel-testing repository for a single install transaction.

$ dnf --enablerepo epel-testing install <foo>

What to test, testing, and reporting results

The Bodhi system is used to track and collate feedback on testing updates. All testing updates will be shown in the Bodhi system. First of all, if any test update package works worse for you in any respect than the pre-update version did, this is a problem that should be communicated to the developers. Secondly, when you click on a certain update, you will see a screen with more information on the update. The Details section should give you information on what the update is intended to fix. You should, if possible, test that the update does indeed fix the issues it claims to fix.

You can give your feedback on a test update by using the Bodhi web interface. There is a Login link in the left-hand sidebar. Log in using your Fedora account. If you don’t have a Fedora account, you can create an account here. Once you are logged in, you will be able to leave a comment on the update. Underneath the comment box are three options: Untested, Works for me, and Does not work. For a guide on when to leave each type of feedback, read the QA:Update_feedback_guidelines[update feedback guidelines].

Each Works for me adds 1 to the test update’s karma, while each Does not work subtracts 1 from it. Untested leaves the karma unchanged. Usually, test updates with karma of 3 are automatically sent out as full official updates, while test updates with karma of -3 are automatically withdrawn from the testing repository. As you can see, your testing and feedback is vital to make sure that good updates are released quickly and bad ones don’t get out to the general public.

See also