I tried to search about this topic, here are my results:

On the docs side, we have documentation regarding it, but more than a policy it's a suggestion added to the FAQ page. This definition predates the docs history since it was imported from the wiki after the move between platforms.

Tried to search for a discussion regarding it on the #meeting #meeting-1 matrix rooms with different combinations of the keywords "name", "package" & "epel" without success. Even suffix doesn't trigger any results either.

The oldest mention on the topic that I found was 3 years ago in the #epel channel, but at that point it seems that it was already the way to do this.

I could try to search on older meeting logs, but meetbot.fedoraproject.org is not well built for that...

ups, I missed this page on the docs where it clearly declares the current policy
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/epel/epel-policy-missing-sub-packages/

I missed this page on the docs where it clearly declares the current policy
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/epel/epel-policy-missing-sub-packages/

Unless I'm missing it (and if I am, please highlight that part) that policy is for epel packages that contain missing sub-packages from RHEL. But the question is about packages that are not in RHEL, but are EPEL only packages.

But, maybe it really is the same thing for the package that we are discussing. It is an EPEL only package for binaries (not sub-packages) that are not in the RHEL packages anymore.

Now, on the topic of the missing sub-packages docs
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/epel/epel-policy-missing-sub-packages/

It started in regards to a problem with a -devel package on CRB
This ended up being worked on https://pagure.io/epel/issue/152 and this PR https://pagure.io/epel/pull-request/155

These are the meetings that had information regarding that ticket

• https://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting/2022-02-09/epel.2022-02-09-21.00.html

• https://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting/2022-02-16/epel.2022-02-16-21.00.html

• https://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting/2022-02-23/epel.2022-02-23-21.00.html

But, maybe it really is the same thing for the package that we are discussing. It is an EPEL only package for binaries (not sub-packages) that are not in the RHEL packages anymore.

Yeah, if that's the case, it qualifies with what I found in the FAQ

https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/epel/epel-faq/#rhel_8_has_binaries_in_the_release_but_is_missing_some_corresponding__devel_package._how_do_i_build_a_package_that_needs_that_missing__devel_package

We don't seem to have an explicit policy regarding that though.

Unless I'm missing it (and if I am, please highlight that part) that policy is for epel packages that contain missing sub-packages from RHEL. But the question is about packages that are not in RHEL, but are EPEL only packages.

Right, and that's where at least myself and @ngompa understood it to mean that the -epel suffix was reserved for those packages. We didn't spell it out explicitly enough it seems, so that's what we need to correct.

This has come up again in RHEL-107107. A maintainer would like to create a gdal-epel package, built with different options, subpackages, and even modified library sonames (libgdal-epel.so.30). I recommended against this pointing to the missing RHEL subpackages page, and their response was that the page doesn't say what they want to do is forbidden. Let's talk about this at tomorrow's meeting to decide what we want the policy to be.

We discussed this at today's EPEL Steering Committee meeting. I've submitted a PR to clarify the policy per the meeting consensus.

https://forge.fedoraproject.org/epel/docs/pulls/358

PR has been merged and is live on the docs site.

This issue has been migrated to Fedora Forge:
https://forge.fedoraproject.org/epel/steering/issues/322

Please continue any further discussion there.