certbot will switch to Python 3 sometime in the future. If we want to ship the same version in EPEL 7 we need to provide a Python 3 version of python-acme.
This package has changed maintainer in the Fedora. Reassigning to the new maintainer of this component.
just fyi: Python 3 build of python-acme available in my copr to check which packages are missing in EPEL 7: https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/fschwarz/certbot-python3-epel7
Python 3.6 which is what's currently packaged in EPEL 7 reaches it's EOL at the end of this year. See https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0494/#lifespan. We're currently planning on dropping support for Python 3.6 upstream around that time. I think no longer trying to support EOL'd software makes our lives easier and is good for the ecosystem. We can potentially reconsider this, but I wanted to share our current thinking and plans here.
Hi Brad, thanks for notifying us. Unfortunately dropping support for Python 3.6 would be a major issue for us. As far as I know Python 3.6 is the Python version is being supported "forever" (a bit like Python 2.7). IIRC EPEL 7 will not get Python 3.7+ (and even if it does we would need all the additional libraries which is not feasible). RHEL 8 ships Python 3.6 by default which should be supported until RHEL 8 goes EOL. While there are additional Python 3 modules (with newer versions) I think there is no easy way currently to build certbot against these modules. RHEL 7 will go EOL in June 2024, RHEL 8 "full support" ends in May 2024, "maintenance support" ends in May 2029. I guess we won't be able to ship the latest certbot on these systems in 2029 but keeping Python 3.6 until a few more years would be helpful for EPEL.
PS: Probably we should involve Miro as I think he knows more about the Python support cycles in EPEL/RHEL.
AFAIK Python 3.6 will be supported in RHEL 7 until EOL of RHEL 7. Same for RHEL 8: until the EOL. Note that Python 3.6 isn't packaged in EPEL 7, because it it in mainline RHEL.
To resurrect this old thread, as I understand it, RHEL is choosing to offer support for Python 3.6 past its upstream EOL. The problem for us as upstream maintainers of Certbot is once a version of Python has reached its EOL much of the Python ecosystem moves on including many of our dependencies. Trying to maintain Python 3.6 support ourselves when this happens is a significant maintenance burden that I unfortunately don't think we can take on so we're still planning on going ahead with dropping Python 3.6 support. I personally still think updating Certbot in EPEL 7 to the last version that supports Python 3.6 is valuable as it's a significant upgrade over the Python 2 version currently in EPEL 7 and it should make backporting fixes easier if that becomes necessary. We can also talk about this more if you like Felix. There has been more discussion about this at https://github.com/certbot/certbot/issues/8983 and https://opensource.eff.org/eff-open-source/pl/t4f854ooxbnuzmg1jbiytz6wby.
EPEL7 has less than a year before EOL. Not going to support cerbot things on python3 on EL7.