There are discovered significant issues that are still without patches. Since the conversion to 6.0.x from 5.x is “one way”, should users be advised to pause in upgrading?
orjson dependency is not bundled in all Linux distributions. And a simple (for novice, not programmer Linux users) manual install workflow has not been promoted.Also, the 6.0 Addon Manager NOT recognizing that a mismatch occurs with 5.2 addon-__.json URLs and 5.2 target versioned addons impacted certain communities heavily.
Some users of Experimental addons and the Isotammi-using Finnish community have had their confidence in 6.0. shaken.
I agree, the distribution of version 6 should be hauled until these important issues are resolved.
As a bystander in all this (sticking with 5.2.4. until at least Spring
of next year) and a Debian user LMDE 6 and Raspberry Pi I have briefly
tried GRAMPS 6 found nothing I desperately needed from a family history
perspective and uninstalled until Debian Trixie is released.
Looking at the issues raised I would suspect that it should at least
have a clear Warning of Experimental not for anyone other than the very
experienced user/developer.
phil
As a Gramps user for over 10 years, I sympathise. I use Xubuntu and always go for the LTS versions for relative ‘stability’ (24.04 LTS for now)
I’ve read some of the posts regarding the problems users are having with package dependencies. I’ve tried to understand building from source too. So far I have not found way to upgrade to v6 so I am staying where I am for now - sorry.
.
I also sympathize. I have upgraded to 6.0.0, but it was somewhat
painful, and so far I haven’t seen changes from 5.2 that matter to me.
I am using Kubuntu (recently upgraded to 25.04) and I was able to use
the Debian package to install 6.0.0. I attempted to install 6.0.1 from
source, but too many things have changed since I last did any serious
development in Python and I realized I was going to have to do a lot
more work than I wanted to do right now, so I will wait for a Debian
package for 6.0.1 if I switch at all.
As it turned out, the most painful part of the upgrade was due to files
being moved from ~/.gramps in older versions to ~/.config/gramps and
~/.local/share/gramps for Gramps 6.0. Once I learned that I was able to
get it working and I haven’t encountered any bugs so far. I’m going to
have to spend some time looking at the Narrative Web report generated by
6.0.0 as it is somewhat different, but at least I didn’t have to make
any changes to the code to get it to work.
Hopefully the last major issues with 6.0 should now be fixed and we will release 6.0.2 shortly.
Good idea, @emyoulation. A pinned post here, possibly linked to a page on the Gramps web site, listing “known issues with Gramps 6.0.x” along with links to bug reports would be very helpful. The release page on GitHub should also link to it.
Informing users gives them a chance to decide whether they want to use 6.0.x given the known issues depending on whether their platform and/or use case is affected by these issues or not.
Also, I’ve seen in bug reports where reporters are asked to upgrade to 6.0.1 even when reporting bug against 5.1.x and 5.2.x. Perhaps we should rethink that as well.
But surely the advice to upgrade to v6 from v5 is being given because v5 bugs are unlikely to get fixed now, and/or because the bugs being reported are already fixed in v6?
How often is that true?
Peter Merchant posted a question on the Gramps-users maillist today. He is unable to identify what missing dependecy is causing his installation problem.
If he has a lite distribution of a linux flavor, how would an orjson deficiency exhibit during an install attempt.
If it is a silent failure, how can it be made explicit and actionable?
Thank you for this, and for creating the .deb file for it.
BUT, I have the problem that it won’t install because it cannot satisfy dependencies, and I have no idea which dependencies were not satisfied.
I am still running gramps 5.2.3 on Kubuntu 25.04 because I have not been able to upgrade. 5.2.3 is the version offered by the installer synaptic.
Thanks for any help.
Peter
Attempting to run Gramps without the orjson dependency will cause Granps to exit with the following error message:
The orjson package is needed to start Gramps.
Gramps will terminate now.
A package manager should also warn if it cannot install the dependency.
My reading was that the installer fails … that he never gets to a point where Gramps could give that dependency response.
And Bret Busby’s reply indicates he hasn’t upgraded because the 5.1.5-1 is the latest available for his preferred Mint 21.3. But he is definitely using a LTS distribution that is known to omit the orjson.
So the question is what fault the Installer (package manager) would report.
Is it specific about WHAT dependency? Or so generically as to be useless, that the OS did not have the necessary dependencies.
If I try to install the Ubuntu 24.10 .deb file on Ubuntu 22.04, then I get the following errors:
Unpacking gramps (6.0.4-1) ...
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of gramps:
gramps depends on python3-orjson; however:
Package python3-orjson is not installed.
and then finally,
Errors were encountered while processing:
gramps
I would expect the same on Mint 21.3 since it is based on Ubuntu 22.04.
Thanks. Sent a mailing list reply based on this info.
The only way I have found to install GRAMPS ver6 on Debian Bookworm
based systems either Raspberry Pi or LMDE6 is via use of a virtual
environment which then allows the installation of orjson.
Would be interested if anybody is doing via alternative routes.
phil
You could install a Gramps as a Flatpak or Snap package:
Installing the python3-orjson dependency using pip in a virtual environment is also an option as you mention. Your other alternative is to backport the python3-orjson package from Trixie to Bookworm.
Thanks Nick
Gave up on both Flatpack and Snap years ago for a variety of reasons might have a look at the backport but suspect I might just wait until I move to Trixie. Quite happy at the moment using 6.0.4 via the venv route.
Tried an upgrade from Bookworm to Trixie on a Pi5 it works but has some issues the main one for me being no easy route to change desktop but that is for another day.
PyPi is a great resource
phil
@PeterM7 Peter’s difficulty is definitely with the orjson prerequisite.
I’m a bit out of my depth. I’m a greenhorn with Linux. Troubleshooting module installation is still a mystery.
But I seem to recollect that there have been issues with sandboxed instances of Python. And that it is important that orjson be installed to the Python being for Gramps.
Or does he just need to reboot?
peterm@peterm-kubuntu:~/Downloads$ sudo dpkg -i gramps_6.0.4-1_all.ubuntu-24.10.deb
Selecting previously unselected package gramps.
(Reading database ... 299408 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack gramps_6.0.4-1_all.ubuntu-24.10.deb ...
Unpacking gramps (6.0.4-1) ...
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of gramps:
gramps depends on python3-orjson; however:
Package python3-orjson is not installed.
dpkg: error processing package gramps (--install):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils (0.27-2build1) ...
Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme (0.17-2) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.12.0-4build2) ...
Processing triggers for shared-mime-info (2.4-4) ...
Errors were encountered while processing:
gramps
-- And I still haven't been able to install orjson.
This looked like it worked, but no. I hope it isn't because I need to reboot.
peterm@peterm-kubuntu:~/Downloads$ pip3 install orjson --break-system-packages
Defaulting to user installation because normal site-packages is not writeable
Collecting orjson
Downloading orjson-3.11.3-cp312-cp312-manylinux_2_17_x86_64.manylinux2014_x86_64.whl.metadata (41 kB)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 41.9/41.9 kB 275.3 kB/s eta 0:00:00
Downloading orjson-3.11.3-cp312-cp312-manylinux_2_17_x86_64.manylinux2014_x86_64.whl (132 kB)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 132.9/132.9 kB 977.8 kB/s eta 0:00:00
Installing collected packages: orjson
Successfully installed orjson-3.11.3
peter
“Gramps depends on python3-orjson; however: Package python3-orjson
is not installed.”
sudo install python3-orjson ??
JohnR