[pkg-firebird-general] Uncoordinated firebird transition (closes: Re: Accepted firebird3.0 3.0.1.32609.ds4-3 (source) into unstable)

[Damyan Ivanov]

-=| Rene Engelhard, 07.10.2016 12:23:29 +0200 |=-
> On Fri, Oct 07, 2016 at 10:05:25AM +0000, Damyan Ivanov wrote:
> [...]
>  firebird3.0 (3.0.1.32609.ds4-3) unstable; urgency=medium   
> [...]
> >    * Upload to unstable
> [...]
> 
> Erm, what? This should have been coordinated. There's libfbclient2.5
> reverse-deps..
> 
> While it doesn't get uninstallable (firebird2.5 exists), firebird-dev now
> points to 3.0, making stuff using 2.5 unbuildable.... I mean stuff expecting
> libfbembed.. I'd need to backport all the FB3 stuff which went into LO 5.3...

Sorry about that, I needed to be more public about my plans.

Thing is, FB2.5's end of life is planned¹ for 2017, which means more 
or less a full Debian release cycle without upstream support. I am 
simply not ready to maintain that. Therefore I aimed at dropping 2.5 
before the release of stretch.

 ¹ http://www.firebirdsql.org/en/roadmap/
   "Firebird v2.5 series is still maintained, it will be discontinued 
   as soon as Firebird v4.0 is released (circa 2017)."

> (And even if it built, one might want to keep whatever upstream uses 
> for file format compatibility... Maybe I'll use the internal 
> firebird copy or just disable libreoffice-sdbc-firebird then...)

File format compatibility will be a problem whenever LO switches from 
fb2.5 to fb3.0. E.g. an user upgrades (jessie->stretch or 
stretch->stretch+1) and their databases can't be opened anymore.

May be I can keep libfbebmed2.5 (plus dependencies) for stretch, 
removing only the server/util/fbclient packages. Would that work for 
libreoffice.org? I'd still prefer to drop 2.5 entirely, but it helps 
to have a backup plan.

> # grep-dctrl -FDepends libfbembed2.5 
> /var/lib/apt/lists/ftp.de.debian.org_debian_dists_sid_main_binary-amd64_Packages 
> -sPackage
> Package: firebird-dev
> Package: firebird2.5-classic
> Package: firebird2.5-classic-common
> Package: firebird2.5-superclassic
> Package: libdbd-firebird-perl
> Package: libreoffice-sdbc-firebird

I am one of the upstream authors of dbd-firebird, so I'll take care of 
it.

I'll take a look at LO next week.

The embedded access that required linking with libfbembed with 2.5 is 
now possible with 3.0's libfbclient, which can load the appropriate 
"engine library" and work without a server. So it seems to me that the 
changes shouldn't be that severe. (But yes, this should have been 
coordinated to avoid the bad surprise effect).


-- Damyan
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