Question1: It looks like ceph updates major versions twice a year, or at least yearly. How long would this rockdb update be good for? How long until you would be asking for another update? Or are you asking for a "exemption" so you could always update it?

Question2: Why not rockdb-8.1 ?

Question1a: It looks like ceph updates major versions twice a year, or at least yearly. How long
would this rocksdb update be good for?

Until ceph devs decide the the current version no longer meets their needs. ;-) Then rocksdb gets updated again or I revert to using the bundled version.

And yes, they plan on a major version every six months. Sometimes they don't make it.

Question1b: How long until you would be asking for another update? Or are you asking for a "exemption" so you could always update it?

I'm not asking for a perpetual exemption; not really. But if there are still no other consumers of rocksdb when the next update is desired then I would likely ask again. Or I can just give up on the idea of using EPEL and always build whatever they bundle.

Question2: Why not rocksdb-8.1 ?

8.1 meets the 'at least 7.9.2' criteria. I'd need to confirm that ceph actually builds with rocksdb-8.

This was brought up in the EPEL Steering Committee meeting. The biggest question was around point 4.

What will break: AFAIK nothing will break, ceph already submodules/bundles rocksdb-7.9.2

We believe you that ceph will not break.

But what about if Company Z uses rockdb from EPEL for Project Y.
Will they have to change configurations?
Will they have to regenerate and/or convert their database?

Good question. I don't know what, if anything changed in rocksdb. I don't know what changes ceph made, if anything when they updated to the new(er) rocksdb.

The stuff I work on in Ceph doesn't use rocksdb. I'm just the dummy that took over maintaining ceph in Fedora and CentOS Storage SIG. ;-)

If the answer is no, c'est la vie. I'm trying to be a good doobie and minimize the amount of bundling that ceph uses.

Today in the EPEL SIG meeting, we've discussed this and we've agreed that we're okay with this, provided you follow the incompatible update process whenever a library ABI version bump occurs, otherwise permission not required given the database stability and compatibility guarantees.

I would prefer if you can update to the latest version and go from there.

This was approved a couple of months ago, but I don't see an update.
But, whether there is an update or not, permission has been given. I'm going to close this issue.

This issue has been migrated to Fedora Forge:
https://forge.fedoraproject.org/epel/steering/issues/236

Please continue any further discussion there.