[debian-mysql] Bug#1031863: libqt5sql5-mysql: incompatible change in libmariadb3 breaks kontact, needs upstream fix in libqt5sql5-mysql

[Paul Boddie]

On Wednesday, 1 March 2023 07:24:23 CET Otto Kekäläinen wrote:
> 
> The fact that his issue surfaced now about something that changed in
> Debian 1-2 years ago and was changed upstream 2 years ago confuses me.
> Also I don't have any easy way to fire up a container and reproduce
> the issue.

It isn't really so mysterious, and I tried to explain it in the original bug I 
filed against Kontact:

1. A change in MariaDB 10.6 broke Qt's MySQL support back in 2021.

2. Someone decided to let this change leak into MariaDB 10.3.38.

3. A Debian package for 10.3.38 was finalised in the last couple of weeks and 
arrived last week.

4. Suddenly, Akonadi cannot connect to MySQL properly and Kontact won't show 
the contents of mail messages any more.

How the change leaked is more mysterious. However, going to the 10.3 branch of 
the server, following the link to libmariadb and the mariadb-connector-c 
repository and using the "blame" tool yields this commit:

https://github.com/mariadb-corporation/mariadb-connector-c/commit/
d204e83104222844251b221e9be7eb3dd9f8d63d

That was made two months ago, but I imagine that the workflow propagated it in 
various branches for a while before a release was actually made.

> However, as a clear patch was suggested I did it in
> https://salsa.debian.org/mariadb-team/mariadb-10.3/-/commits/bugfix/1031863-> libmariadb3-version-id

I realised that I had messed up my own patch, explaining why I didn't see any 
change in behaviour with my revised package, but rebuilding again and testing 
now, I can confirm that the above patch fixes the problem. Reverting to the 
distribution-supplied libqt5sql5-mysql package and using the patched version 
of libmariadb3 makes Kontact and Akonadi work again.

> The the Salsa runner comes back online and pipeline works again, there
> will be build artifacts available at
> https://salsa.debian.org/mariadb-team/mariadb-10.3/-/jobs/4004950 and
> you can download the libmariadb3 with this patched and test if it
> fixes your mail client situation.

It seems that the pipeline failed, but I managed to build a revised package 
anyway.

I have no idea about whether other software has been broken by this, but 
anyone using the distribution-supplied packages for libmariadb3 and 
libqt5sql5-mysql will have seen programs break.

Maybe only the Akonadi stack is affected as a consequence. Since people tend 
to abandon the KDE groupware programs every time something breaks, it is 
entirely possible that there are relatively few users left to complain.

All this effort for a single-token change in a file that shouldn't have been 
made in the first place!

Paul