Subject: [bug#45531] [PATCH] gnu: hdf5: Update to 1.12.0.

From: zimoun <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 06 Jan 2021 19:38:09 +0100

Hi,

On Tue, 05 Jan 2021 at 10:34, Vincent Legoll <[email-masked]> wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 30, 2020 at 7:35 PM zimoun <[email-masked]> wrote:
>> Please check that all the packages depending on hdf5-1.10 correctly
>> build with 1.12.0, for example: freecad, libmedfile, etc.
>>
>> And also hdf5-parallel-openmpi which inherits from, so packages
>> depending on that too.
>
> Is this specific to that package or should I always rebuild all the
> dependencies (& their dependencies) for each package update ?

I do not know if there is a rule.  But hdf5 is used by many scientific
packages and so changing the default version needs some care, IMHO.
Upgrading the version could lead to annoying breakages and it is better
to fix them at this upgrading time than to discover them later.

Well, I am not sure about your initial intention with your patch,

 a) add the new variable hdf5-1.12
 b) change the variable hdf5-1.10 by hdf5-1.12 which means replace all
 the occurrences of hdf5-1.10 and check everything builds; note the
 default hdf5 is changed too so it is a lot of rebuilds

Some packages specifically depends on hdf5-1.8 so maybe some packages
also specifically require hdf5-1.10; I have not checked.

These 9 packages specifically use hdf5-1.10:

        hdf5-parallel-openmpi, freecad, libmedfile, hdf5-blosc,
        python-h5py, python-tables, sbcl-hdf5-cffi, r-rhdf5lib,
        sra-tools

so they need special care, at least. :-)

My point is “guix refresh -l hdf5” says the upgrade could have an impact
on a couple of packages and I just wanted be sure that you were aware of
that. :-)

All the best,
simon