libopenvswitch is not built

[Devsteig]

The Ubuntu modifications to Open vSwitch disables the build of libopenvswitch and libopenvswitch-dev. The modifications were introduced in commit 3525cd6ed4 at Mon Aug 7 15:54:12 2017 +0100. The commit message says...

> Drop libopenvswitch for now

... without further explanation.

1) Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS

2) libopenvswitch 2.17.2-0ubuntu0.22.04.2 500 & libopenvswitch-dev 2.17.2-0ubuntu0.22.04.2 500. Both are non-existent.

3) I expect debs to be built for libopenvswitch and libopenvswich-dev when building debs from `apt-get source` or `debcheckout openvswitch`. I also expect these packages to be available in the official Ubuntu package archive together with the other Open vSwitch packages (https://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=openvswitch&searchon=names&suite=jammy&section=all)

Build command: `debuild -b -uc -us`
Alternate: `DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS='parallel=8 nocheck' fakeroot debian/rules binary`

4) libopenvswitch and libopenvswitch-dev are not built, nor available in the official Ubuntu package archive.

What can I do to build the libopenvswitch{-dev} libraries? Let me know if there is anything I can do to contribute in resolving this issue.

[Devsteig (stigmha)]

The attached patch is a revert of commit 3525cd6ed4 combined with modifications to the *.install files in order to properly copy the required files for the deb.

Note that openvswitch for some reason install the libraries directly to /usr/lib/ rather than creating its own directory within, but modifying that in the *.install files currently breaks the build.

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

The attachment "Patch re-enabling the build of openvswitch{-dev}" seems to be a patch. If it isn't, please remove the "patch" flag from the attachment, remove the "patch" tag, and if you are a member of the ~ubuntu-reviewers, unsubscribe the team.

[This is an automated message performed by a Launchpad user owned by ~brian-murray, for any issues please contact him.]

[Frode Nordahl (fnordahl)]

The Open vSwitch project provides a very useful library indeed, however, upstream does not provide any ABI guarantees for the library, and as a consequence it would be impossible for any distribution to provide a stable delivery of a library package. For reference, building of a separate library package has also been disabled in Debian [0].

Projects building on OVS library code usually embed building of OVS as part of their build process, one example of this is OVN [1]. I would suggest to follow a similar approach instead.

0: https://salsa.debian.org/fnordahl/openvswitch/-/commit/9131194f475224ee8302ab19c4dd00cd45008adc
1: https://github.com/ovn-org/ovn