[Debian-med-packaging] planning (a) hsqldb transition(s)

[Rene Engelhard]

Hi,

(sid)root at frodo:/# grep-available -FDepends libhsqldb -sPackage | awk '{ print $2 }' | grep -v ".*hsqldb"
libbiojava1.7-java
entagged
libreoffice-base
libopenjpa-java
pixelmed-java
biomaj
paros

are the packages in sid right now which depend on libhsqldb-java.

I kept libhsqldb-java 1.8.0.x in unstable (and 1.8.1.x only in experimental)
because openoffice.org (and now libreoffice) need 1.8.0.x for it's file format
compatibility ([1])

Now this seems to be fixed in 1.8.1.x:

(quote from #libreoffice-dev/freenode, 2012-02-10):

10:46 <@caolan> _rene_: hsqldb guy (fred) tells me that the hsqldb 1.8.1 series file format is the same as the 1.8.0 file format, except for one feature we don't use, so that in theory we can upgrade to 1.8.1, change bits in org.hsqldb.persist.HsqlDatabaseProperties to write 1.8.0 and .odb written with 1.8.1 will open
fine in 1.8.0
[...]
10:48 <@caolan> _rene_: I asked fred to send all the details of the 1.8.X and 2.X.X hsqldb stuff to the list
[...]
10:51 <@_rene_> caolan: yeah, that "I write 1.8.1 in the document format" thing is why noone upgraded it yet.. (except gentoo who then reverted it as it broke..)
10:52 <@_rene_> caolan: but yeah, good thing
10:53 < CIA-63> LibreOffice (core) smvarela * (3 files in 3 dirs): Remove unused code.
10:53 <@caolan> _rene_: fred suggested he might do a maintenance 1.8.X release. It wasn't quite clear if that release would auto-configure to claiming its output format was 1.8.0 out of the box, making the problem just go away, or if it would need to be tweaked, which wouldn't massively help the distros
10:54 <@caolan> though maybe he could add an api to set the output format from using-code, which might resolve it properly
[...]
14:20 <@caolan> _rene_: yeah, fred from hsqldb with release a hsqldb 1.8.1.4 with some sort of hook that can be used to tell it to write 1.8.0 compatible databases
14:20 <@_rene_> ok
14:21 <@_rene_> thenwe just need to use the hook in 3.5.1 and 3.4.6 :-)
14:22 <@caolan> yeah, and then we're back on track with system-hsqldb, of the 1.8.X series anyway
14:22 <@_rene_> yep
14:23 <@_rene_> (/me still has system-hsqldb, but just because he maintains hsqldb, too and kept 1.8.1.x only in experimental)
14:23 <@caolan> cheater :-)
14:24 <@_rene_> :)
14:27 <@_rene_> .oO ( maybe I should also just rename the package to libhsqldb1.8-java )

so I'd like to upload that to unstable (and adapt libreoffice) if it happens.

But this problem makes me ask

Q1) does anyone of your programs using libhsqldb-java have the same problem? Do we need to wait for them to be patches
    to upload 1.8.1.x?

As you probably noticed, libhsqldb-java is 1.8.x while we have a
libhsqldb2.0-java in experimental (and there's a 2.2.8 released, which I
packaged some days ago and is ready to upload here now that I long neglected
because I didn't care as OOo and LibO *do* need 1.8.x.)

Q2) Would you agree that renaming libhsqldb-java to libhsqldb1.8-java would be
    worthwile? We then can upload 2.2.8 as libhsqldb-java. This needs source
    uploads of all the above packages, though.

Q3) Does anyone want to overtake libhsqldb-java (2.x) then? I am only
    interested in 1.8.x for OOo/LO.

Q4) does anyone need 2.0 *and* 2.2 be different? Anything working with 2.0
    and not 2.2? (Doubt that, but better safe than sorry) - in that case we
    need to have libhsqldb1.8-java, libhsqldb2.0-java and the "new"
    libhsqldb-java)

I'll upload 1.8.1.4 when it comes without change first (same with 2.2.8-1
and a hsqldb2.0 update)

Comments (and answers), please ;-)

Regards,

Rene

[1]
$ unzip New\ Database.odb 
Archive:  New Database.odb
 extracting: mimetype                
  inflating: content.xml             
  inflating: database/properties     
  inflating: database/script         
  inflating: settings.xml            
  inflating: META-INF/manifest.xml   
$ grep 1\.8 mimetype content.xml database/properties database/script settings.xml META-INF/manifest.xml
database/properties:#HSQL Database Engine 1.8.0.10
database/properties:version=1.8.0
database/properties:hsqldb.original_version=1.8.0
database/properties:hsqldb.compatible_version=1.8.0