Bug 2035492

Summary:	Firebird 4 is not backwards compatible with firebird 3!
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora EPEL	Reporter:	emilt
Component:	firebird	Assignee:	Jonathan Wright <jonathan>
Status:	NEW ---	QA Contact:	Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity:	high	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	epel8	CC:	emilt, i, makowski.fedora
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Hardware:	x86_64
OS:	Linux
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Description emilt 2021-12-24 09:08:17 UTC

Firebird 4 packages are provided as an upgrade to Firebird 3. Firebird 4 cannot read Firebird 3 (ODS 12) databases. After an upgrade the databases are unavailable and there is no easy way back.

There should be different packages for firebird3 and firebird4 (and future versions, as backward compatibility is not expected, and the lifetimes of major versions normally overlap)

Additionally, separate 'Engine' packages may be considered, for example and 'engine12' package, which would add firebird3's engine to firebird4.

Comment 1 Philippe Makowski 2022-01-03 08:37:17 UTC

Hi,

That's not a bad idea, but I won't do it, I don't have enough time for that.
If someone want to step in and do it, nice.

What you can do is to extract libEngine12.so from latest Firebird 3 package (ie https://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=1745911) and put it in /usr/lib64/firebird/plugins

Or you just need to restore your backup done before with Firebird 3 with the new Firebird 4.

Comment 2 emilt 2022-01-06 07:29:25 UTC

There are two things here, so let's clarify.

The idea to have separate "engine" packages is just a nice-to-have.

But I don't think it is acceptable for a routine `dnf update` to break without warning a perfectly working system and force a major firebird version upgrade - or send one looking for some obscure location hunting for a file from an already outdated package. 

What I ask for is a separate firebird4 package that does not automatically upgrade firebird 3. If you don't have the time for that, would you please give some general overview of what has to be done, so that I or/and someone with better rpm experience can try to fix this situation?

Comment 3 Fedora Admin user for bugzilla script actions 2025-07-31 01:04:56 UTC

This package has changed maintainer in Fedora. Reassigning to the new maintainer of this component.