[Bug 206469] Re: merge firebird2.0 from debian

Damyan Ivanov dmn at debian.org
Mon Mar 31 08:47:47 BST 2008


-=| Daniel Holbach, Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 07:04:04AM -0000 |=-
> To me it seems that this would revert the changes made in 5ubuntu1, namely:
>  - debian/patches/ubuntu-port-ia64.patch
>  - debian/patches/ubuntu-port-hppa.patch

For the record, new ports are disabled in Debian to avoid clashes with
implementation IDs with upstream.

Background: in firebird, each combination of hardware architecture and
operating system that is supported is given an unique number, called
"implementation ID". Databases that are created on a given system have
the implementation id of the OS/arch in them to avoid opening the same
database on another arch/OS, which could possibly lead to corruption
(the binary file format differs between architectures/OSes).

Adding new implementation IDs as patches is bad, as there is no
guarantee that upstream will not use the same implementation ID for some
other OS/arch, or, if upstream will use the same implementation ID for
the new port as the patch.

In the former case databases will be wrongly identified, in the later,
there will be incompatibility between upstream and the distribution. For
example, if patch adds ID 80 to be linux/ia64, and later upstream adds
support to linux/ia64 using implementation ID 85, when the upstream
change propagates to the distribution, the new version of the package
(identifying linux/ia64 as 85) will be unable to work woth the databases
created with the patched version (as they use ID 80).

So if you ask me, drop the patches and ask upstream to add them in their
CVS[1]. This way the IDs will be "reserved" and can be safely added to
the package even if upstream didn't make a release that supports them
yet.

    [1] I'fe done this before, and the usual reaction is "Did you run
    the TCS test suite?" so it would be good if you can confirm that
    Firebird really works on the new architecture.


Also, as always, sending the patches to Debian BTS is warmly encouraged
and will help keep differences between Debian and Ubunti to a minimum.


Thanks for reading this far :)
-- 
dam            JabberID: dam at jabber.minus273.org


** Attachment added: "unnamed"
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-- 
merge firebird2.0 from debian 
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/206469
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