Good news! The author of osgEarth (@gwaldron) intends to improve upon this situation, and also asked for guidance on exactly how: https://github.com/gwaldron/osgearth/issues/1596 Does this mean that osgEarth could perhaps make its way back into Debian (and consequently Ubuntu)? We certainly would like that very much!
Thanks again, Attila On Sat, Nov 7, 2020 at 5:12 PM Török, Attila <[email protected]> wrote: > 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 >
