[Koha-devel] Koha packaging problems (Deb10/Buster)

[Mason James]

hi Julian
> deb http://debian.koha-community.org/koha stretch/19.11
this solution is very clean from a user's perspective - but... it does create a lot more repo setup complexity and effort per release
this solution requires that all 3x3 distributions have all packages explicitly added to them, so 3x more package relationships to maintain

i think the following is good alternative solution...

  deb http://debian.koha-community.org/distro  [buster/19.11|jessie/18.11|stable/stable|...}
  deb http://debian.koha-community.org/koha  [19.11|18.11|stable|...}

the magic of this solution is that most 'distro' distributions will be empty, as there is no problem with them (eg: bullseye/20.05, stretch/19.11, jessie/20.05, etc...)
they will continue to install the default packages from the 'koha' repo - currently, only a small number of the distributions will require additional packages (eg: buster/*)


-  alternative provides the same level of koha+distro combinations
-  alternative continues to use the existing 'koha' repo for 99% of the packages
-  alternative has the 'distro' packages located in a different directory, so easier to understand and maintain
-  only a minimum of 3 distros to update per release cycle, not 3x3 minimum

the good news about the extra complexity is we can use jenkins-ci to test/detect any problems before release

cheers, Mason


On 10/03/20 8:35 pm, Julian Maurice wrote:
> Hi,
>
> With the 'distro' repo, won't we have incompatibility problems between the Koha version and the Perl modules versions ? For instance, if Koha 18.11 and 19.11 require 2 different versions of Mojolicious, how would that be solved ?
>
> Another option is to have one repository per Koha version, for instance:
>
> deb http://debian.koha-community.org/koha_19.11 [stretch|buster|bionic|...]
>
> or to add the Koha version to the distribution name
>
> deb http://debian.koha-community.org/koha stretch/19.11
>
> That way we can support every koha/distro combinations we want.
>
> Le 10/03/2020 à 08:08, Mason James a écrit :
>> Hi Koha devs
>>
>> We have a dependency problem with the release of debian-10 and the following packages. (debian-11 is ok)
>>
>>   libmojolicious-perl
>>   libmojolicious-plugin-openapi-perl
>>   libyaml-libyaml-perl
>>
>>
>> The packages require specific versions to be built for specific debian releases, due to their dependencies.
>> This type of problem has occurred before: an example is the libcryptx-perl/ubuntu-16.04 bug. or elasicsearch with jessie...
>>   https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=23128
>>
>> The specifics of the dependency problem are quite complex so I wont bore you unless you really ask :)
>>
>> It seems the best solution is to create a new 'distro' repo that contains a small number of additional distro-specific packages. This should allow us to support every type of koha/distro (and arch) combination
>>
>>
>> Here's an example of a Koha sources.list file...  (We can name the distro releases/aliases as we please)
>>
>>   deb http://debian.koha-community.org/koha [19.05|19.11|stable|oldstable|oldoldstable] main
>>   deb http://debian.koha-community.org/distro [debian9|ubuntu16.04|bionic|ubuntu-oldstable|stable] main
>>
>>
>> FYI: It's possible to add the distro-specific packages to the existing 'koha' repo, but that should probably be avoided due to managing the extra complexity (its cleaner to separate the two repos imho)
>>
>>
>> Two other options...
>>   1/ use kc.org debian packages, with cpanminus (or similar) providing the distro specific packages (extra installation steps and complexity)
>>   2/ ignore the problem for now, and accept that older koha/distro combinations will be forced to break
>>
>> Does anyone have any other solutions that I have missed, or a better solution even?
>>
>>
>> Cheers, Mason
>>
>>
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>> website : http://www.koha-community.org/
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>> bugs : http://bugs.koha-community.org/
>>
>