Bug#1090900: fenics-dolfinx: autopkgtest regressions with HDF5 1.14

[Emilio Pozuelo Monfort]

On Sat, 21 Dec 2024 10:42:51 +0200 Drew Parsons <dparsons at debian.org> wrote:
> Source: fenics-dolfinx
> Followup-For: Bug #1090900
> X-Debbugs-Cc: 1088632 at bugs.debian.org
> 
> There's something wrong here.
> 
> fenics-dolfinx 1:0.9.0-5+b1 is rebuilt against the
> new hdf5 1.14, and passing tests in unstable.
> 
> The tests in testing are still using the old build 1:0.9.0-5 not
> 1:0.9.0-5+b1, so of course they are failing.
> 
> I thought transition testing was supposed to use the new binNMU version.
> Is it a new bug in britney that it's stopped doing that?
> 
> petsc is affected the same way. 3.22.2+dfsg1-1+b1 is built against the
> new hdf5 1.14, but transition testing is still using 3.22.2+dfsg1-1.

I believe that's intentional. hdf5 could migrate on its own to testing if say 
fenics-dolfinx or petsc have a bug blocking testing migration or for whatever 
reason, and then hdf5 could break them in testing if that combination wasn't tested.

That's why e.g. petsc needs stricter dependencies on mpich (or to drop that 
mpich check), so that either the petsc packages get upgraded due to the stricter 
deps, or testing against the new mpich works without an #error.

Looks like fenics-dolfinx has a similar runtime check:

160s Warning! ***HDF5 library version mismatched error***
160s The HDF5 header files used to compile this application do not match
160s the version used by the HDF5 library to which this application is linked.
160s Data corruption or segmentation faults may occur if the application continues.
160s This can happen when an application was compiled by one version of HDF5 but
160s linked with a different version of static or shared HDF5 library.

So it either needs to drop that check (preferred, to ease transitions and 
upgrades of hdf5 in the future) or to have a stricter dependency (that will make 
it harder for hdf5, as then it will have to migrate together with 
fenics-dolfinx, and transitions or simple new upstream releases with no ABI 
breaks may be delayed due to that).

Cheers,
Emilio