ooo-voikko: please rebuild against current ooo-core

(18.50.18) Q-FUNK: _rene_: would you happen to remember, which ooo plugins must be rebuilt after every new ooo upstream, such as ooo-voikko?
(18.51.19) _rene_: voikko
(18.51.34) _rene_: it's the only one
(18.51.37) Q-FUNK: voikko is the only one with such a versioned Conflicts?
(18.51.41) _rene_: yes
(18.52.25) _rene_: except -report-builder, but that comes out of the OOo source itself and is because the extension data say so
(18.52.42) _rene_: or (prospective) -mysql-connector which want >= 3.1 < 3.3.
(18.52.43) Q-FUNK: ah, ok
(18.52.58) _rene_: but there's none like voikko which need rebuild for every version, and be it minor :)

Now that OpenOffice 3.1.1 is finally in Karmic, could we please proceed with the ooo-voikko rebuild? Thanks!

Yep, a rebuild should be done. Additionally, there is bug #423048 preventing ooo-voikko from being installed automatically in karmic, and bug #414753 about ooo-help-fi (new in karmic) being not installed automatically either.

These would be nice to get escalated... this bug seems to be subscribed by Chris, but I wonder if anyone reads language-support-xxx bug reports...

As explained at bug #409764, ooo-voikko and mozvoikko are nowadays installed by the language selection tool, instead of by language-support-writing-fi. This is to prevent pulling Firefox and OpenOffice on systems where lightweight alternatives e.g. AbiWord, Epiphany, Chromium, etc. are installed instead.

This bug was fixed in the package openoffice.org-voikko - 3.1-2build1

---------------
openoffice.org-voikko (3.1-2build1) karmic; urgency=low

  * No-change rebuild against current OpenOffice.org, to make package
    installable again. (LP: #420003)

 -- Martin Pitt <email address hidden> Mon, 14 Sep 2009 10:37:30 +0200

I've just asked a core-dev and a binary-build should be uploaded soon. :)

However, this doesn't resolve the main issue: ooo-voikko has pointlessly paranoid dependency versions which force us to rebuild with every tiny OOO update, which is a process that currently cannot be automated. This needs to be fixed, either by inventing a method for automatically triggering binary builds after a new OOO enters the archive, or by making ooo-voikko accept a wider range of OOO versions.

Timo, do you think that you could coordinate with Debian and with the upstream Voikko team to find a permanent solution to this issue?

The history for using Conflicts is initiated in Voikko upstream because of the unreliability of UNO in OpenOffice.org, described eg. here: http://lists.puimula.org/old-voikko-archive/2006-July/000654.html

I'm unable to judge whether the risks in OOo 3.1 era (and the future versions) are lower than they were at OOo 2 time, but the issue could be again raised also in the light that other ooo extension are not declaring the Conflicts field. If (and only if...) OOo nowadays allows declaring OOo versions the extension is compatible with ala Firefox, that could be used instead. That requires of course also package uploads, but at least eg. OOo RC version could be tested and then the compatibility could be declared beforehand, and on the package level there would be no conflicts.

Right, so the issue is with 'unopkg' being too stupid to notice when it has been built with a compiler whose ABI version differs from the previous one and easily crashing with segmentation fault as a result of an ABI-incompatible upgrade between OOO and its third-party plug-ins.

At least, that was the case around OOO 2.0.2 and 2.0.3, which were ABI-incompatible, thus requiring that ooo-voikko be rebuilt against the new OOO release.

The next step is to verify whether this is still the case with OOO 3.x.x or not. I think that Rene Engelhard would know.

Rene says that upstream OOo claims to have retained ABI compatibility along the years, but he also noticed that there were several changes that required a new ooo-voikko between 3.0 and 3.1.

Still, he feels that compatibility should exists between minor updates e.g. 3.1.0 to 3.1.2 should remain compatible. Also, a build should remain compatible between a Release Candidate and the final release that follows, so an ooo-voikko built against e.g. OOo 3.2.0-rc1 should still work on 3.2.0 final.

The only question mark is whether upstream will make more unannounced changes "that maintain ABI compatibility" between major updates e.g. 3.1 and 3.2; according to Rene, experience proves that this can never be taken for granted.