Re: Any volunteer to update GNUHealth packages
Hi team,
2015-02-09 8:40 GMT+01:00 Andreas Tille <andreas@an3as.eu>:
> Hi,
>
> GNUHealth 2.8.1 was released which is using tryton 3.4.0. We lost the
> official GNUHealth package recently due to incompatibilities with
> tryton. Any volunteer to prepare a package for exoerimental is more
> than welcome.
>
> Kind regards
>
> Andreas.
The compatibility issues due to the strict dependency of GNU Health on
a specific version of Tryton is a problem that is not solved. Tryton
3.4.0 was released on 2014-10-20 [0], with a release cycle of 6 months
we will face this version incompatibility issue in about 2 months
again.
At any point in time, when you look at the most recent GNU Health
version you have a very high probability that there already is a newer
(and thus incompatible) Tryton version out. As I had investigated [2]
looking at the 9 months between 2013-04-22 and 2014-01-26, the latest
version of GNU Health was depending on the then last version of Tryton
only for one month.
[0] http://www.tryton.org/posts/new-tryton-release-34.html
[1] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/health-dev/2014-01/msg00042.html
Aside from this issue, there was also the question of what should the
package be?
My vision was to provide a package that would allow the user to start
using the application out of the box, without needing to fiddle with
both Postgres' and Tryton's configuration files. The package obviously
still allowed you do so if you want to, just answer no to the prompt
if the installer should create a database. But upstream indicated
[2]they prefer all their users to install the software using the
upstream-provided install bash script, so as to have a uniform way in
which the software is installed. Reasoning is that it helps with bug
investigation when issues arise.
Debian is known to path upstream software to make it fit its vision of
how an OS should be, making sure all software is installed in a
uniform way. I know some upstreams don't like that. Not sure how this
should be handled further, ideas welcome.
[2] https://lists.debian.org/debian-med/2014/03/msg00208.html
A final discussion point was with the Debian Tryton maintainer
(Matthias, feel free to comment, as I believe you are on the d-med
mailing list): Tryton is developed and packaged with separate
tarball/.deb for each module. GNU Health is provided as one single
tarball. Matthias was of the opinion that the gnuhealth software
should be provided as separate .deb, to allow separate installation.
His motivation was security, to not install packages that are not
needed.
Aside from this being somewhat more cumbersome, it could still be
reached by having one source package output multiple binary package,
possibly also with one generic gnuhealth package that would depend on
the essential/wanted binary packages. Thoughts?
Before/if I start working on that package again, I want to make sure
we reach a consensus (this time ;) )
Emilien
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