On Sat, Nov 7, 2020 at 4:25 PM Sebastiaan Couwenberg <[email protected]>
wrote:

> The removal was very much intentional.
>
> osgEarth doesn't maintain its libraries properly, when their ABI breaks
> the SONAME is not bumped for example. And these ABI breaks tend to
> happen for every new osgEarth release.
>
> This made the globe support in qgis problematic, as every new osgEarth
> release required changes to QGIS. Hence we stopped supporting this
> feature in Debian, reducing the need to have osgearth available in Debian.
>
> osgEarth also tended to break with newer OpenSceneGraph releases, this
> made maintaining the package not worth the effort for someone who
> doesn't use it himself.
>

I see. Thank you for the explanation! Their fluctuating API (not even
ABI...) has indeed caused some frustration for us and our users as well, so
I understand your decision of stopping support for it.


> > Is there a way for us to help osgearth come back into future (or maybe
> even
> > the current) Debian and Ubuntu releases?
>
> Work with upstream to handle library compatibility better for starters.
>
> > Also: What do you think is the situation regarding the recently released
> > osgEarth 3.0? Could it make it into Debian (and Ubuntu) in the
> foreseeable
> > future? Even considering that it still requires GDAL 2.x, which might
> > conflict with other packages?
>
> I have not looked into osgEarth 3.0 and don't plan to do so. If this new
> major release includes proper library management and backwards
> compatibility, there may be a future for the package in Debian.
>
> Without anyone working on maintaining the package in Debian there is no
> chance of it being reintroduced in Debian and Ubuntu. If you want to use
> the osgearth package available in Debian and Ubuntu for your work,
> you'll need to step up and maintain the package.
>

We'll also have to see if it would be worth the required effort for us...

Have a nice weekend,
Attila

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