Fedora Developers Are Looking At Better Managing Retired Packages

A change proposal for Fedora 33 would introduce the concept of "fedora-retired-packages" for removing retired packages when upgrading Fedora.

Retired packages are those packages that are not required by any other packages and are no longer maintained upstream and then no longer packaged by Fedora maintainers. Currently, when upgrading Fedora Linux, these retired Fedora packages remain installed albeit with the older installed RPM.

Fedora has the concept of fedora-obsoletes-package for retiring packages that would otherwise cause issues on upgrades, but nothing for the common packages that are retired / no longer being maintained.

The current fedora-retired-packages proposal would obsolete the retired package in the version past the current latest version and then remove the package on upgrade. The proposal is laid out in full via the Fedora Wiki.

The proposal is generating mixed views on their mailing list with some seeing the possibility of some users wanting to still have their installed retired packages left on the system and as such may be better ways to handle the process. We'll see if/what happens for Fedora 33 due out later this year.