[Debian-med-packaging] Bug#748561: GNU Health autoremove from testing

[Emilien Klein]

Hi team, read below for an important announcement regarding the GNU
Health package in  Debian.

2014-06-02 23:28 GMT+02:00 Emilien Klein <emilien at klein.st>:
> Piuparts identified this bug in March, and I haven't taken the time to
> fully address the issue that only happens in certain locales it seems
> (I've not encountered it in all my installations)
>
> The solution will be either to:
> - review the encoding of the database (`psql -l` to check it)

The encoding of the database is already Unicode, nothing to change
there (I already had the assumption that dbconfig-common does the
right thing)

> - only initialize a limited number of GNU Health Tryton modules, point 2 in [0].

That doesn't work, since the "bug" in not in a GNU Health provided
file, but in the initializing of the "ir" module, which is provided by
Tryton upstream.

Since the Tryton Debian package isn't creating a database as part of
their packaging efforts, they never hit this issue (which, as I've
explained, I've never seen myself, but piuparts somehow does). Based
on the various discussions with the Tryton Debian maintainer, I don't
expect the Tryton package will start creating its own database anytime
soon, and as such they will not see/fix this bug. I will mention this
one more time for good measure.

In order to pass piuparts, the only solution is to not initialize the
database at all.
Tryton will not recognize an empty (as in, not Tryton-initialized)
Postgres database. Thus, there is no need anymore to create the
database using dbconfig-common for the gnuhealth-server package.
Creating, but more importantly upgrading and backing up the database
was the main driver for the existence of the gnuhealth-server package.

The gnuhealth-client package was created as a shell to allow for easy
and user-friendly (including creation of a Tryton profile which links
to the specific GNU Health Tryton server, a .desktop file with an icon
that end users [nurses, doctors, etc.] could just double-click). But
since there is no ready-to-use database anymore, the need for this
client package also dissapears.

Starting with version 2.4.1-3 of the GNU Health package in Debian,
there will thus only be one binary package (`gnuhealth`) produced,
which will contain the server-side components (Tryton modules) and
nothing else.

I am a bit sad to remove what I still consider to be a functional and
user-friendly packaging:
Just apt-get install gnuhealth, enter your chosen password and you're
ready to go with a database that will be upgraded and backed up
automatically for you, should you forget to do so (you obviously had
the option to respond "no" when prompted if the package should
maintain the database for you, and you are always free/encouraged to
run your own backups of your databases)

With the new GNU Health package, you will have to:
- set up your Tryton server manually (see the lengthy manual steps at
[0], which among other things includes having to modify your
PostgreSQL config files manually),
- create your database (granted, not too difficult since it can be
done in the Tryton client)
- more worryingly, make sure that each user has to apply the
upstream-provided scripts and back their database up (don't tell me
all the users will do that without ever missing a step...)

But on the other hand I'm not that sad, since:
- it was a very interesting learning project, allowing me to
understand dbconfig-common
- it's not like it's a super-used package: popcon had an all-time
record of 3 installs (and that's including 2 on my test and devel
boxes, I assume)
- it will still help the user a little bit by not having to download,
unpack and install new tarballs, and uninstalling a Debian package is
much easier than a PIP-installed sofware ;)

Should anyone in the future want to see how the user-friendly package
used to work, please look at the Debian-med subversion repository
prior to revision 17092 [1].

The new version 2.4.1-3 is pushed to Subversion. Could one of the
Debian-med DDs please upload it to unstable? (will close the Serious
bug #748561 which, if left open, would mean the complete removal of
gnuhealth in sid in less than 2 weeks).

The packages gnuhealth-server and gnuhealth-client will have to be
removed from sid (and from testing once the new package migrates to
testing). I'd appreciate a pointer to understand who I should ask that
to.

Thanks everybody for your input and help on this package!
   +Emilien

[0] http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=tryton/tryton-server.git;a=blob_plain;f=debian/tryton-server.README.Debian;hb=HEAD
[1] http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-med?view=revision&revision=17092