On Thu, May 8, 2014 at 7:36 PM, Christopher Meng <cickumqt@gmail.com> wrote:
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 9:57 AM, Matthew Miller <mattdm@fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> Quite a lot; they make no attempt at compatibility. I think I'd respond with
> that. EPEL packages might work on Amazon Linux, and they might not.

Matthew, thanks for your reply.

I took the info from the bug, and found that pcre on amazon linux is
8.x, quite fresh, RHEL only has 7.x version for customers.

So I believe it's worthwhile to add some notes on EPEL page to alert the
incompatibility.

The EPEL is designed to support RHEL and its derivatives. Amazon Linux seems to have started with EL6 as a base to at least some extent but has since evolved significantly. They do have a FAQ ( https://aws.amazon.com/amazon-linux-ami/faqs/ ) and it does reference the EPEL and how to use it, but it also talks about how it is "updated to include the latest components on a regular basis". It also talks about how there are several packages that are in Amazon Linux that are newer than those in the EL6 and the EPEL.

Honestly, I think that the documentation of the issues with the EPEL packages should really go on the Amazon side of things. They're the ones that are deviating from EL and they should be letting their users know about that instead of just saying "you can use the packages from EPEL". I guess that doesn't preclude the EL/EPEL community from trying to be good citizens and help users out with a little documentation, but I don't think any significant amount of effort should be put into it.

Also, I'm not all that familiar with EC2 but it does appear that they do have a EL offering ( http://aws.amazon.com/partners/redhat/ ) that should be fully compatible with EPEL and that should definitely be proposed to anyone that runs into issues using the EPEL. It also looks like there's options for using CentOS as well ( http://wiki.centos.org/Cloud/AWS ), so I think there are plenty of good options for those wanting to use the EPEL and it just may not be that Amazon Linux is high on that list.

Dave