calibre-web: package repository contains older version of calibre with higher version number

[husjon]

I'm using renovatebot for keeping my deployments updated and with calibre-web it seem to try to pick up a version 5.33.2 as the latest, this version is however already 4 years old and is a non-existing version in the repository of calibre-web.

Latest version as of writing is 0.6.27.
ImageID: cde0cc98630ea1cc12625bc286782b3c6584f92b337e98712b146a3fa62f6f29
Digest: sha256:802729966faed5e32d671cd4f92ba6196e9e754a6c0f740ce1ee9acd86b10e55

❯ podman pull ghcr.io/linuxserver/calibre-web:latest
❯ podman pull ghcr.io/linuxserver/calibre-web:0.6.27
❯ podman pull ghcr.io/linuxserver/calibre-web:5.33.2

❯ podman images | grep calibre-web
ghcr.io/linuxserver/calibre-web                   0.6.27      cde0cc98630e  2 days ago    819 MB
ghcr.io/linuxserver/calibre-web                   latest      cde0cc98630e  2 days ago    819 MB
ghcr.io/linuxserver/calibre-web                   5.33.2      aee9c1dd1089  4 years ago   365 MB

---

After inspecting the image directly, it seem to actually be an image for Calibre rather than calibre-web

❯  podman image mount ghcr.io/linuxserver/calibre-web:5.33.2                              
Error: cannot run command "podman image mount" in rootless mode, must execute `podman unshare` first

~ 
❯  podman unshare                                           

root in ~ 
❯  podman image mount ghcr.io/linuxserver/calibre-web:5.33.2                              
/home/husjon/.local/share/containers/storage/overlay/804d433b95db0e7cf507552fa6a3466233d4f96f60f610abd82ff497eb0c7dd3/merged

root in ~ 
❯  cd /home/husjon/.local/share/containers/storage/overlay/804d433b95db0e7cf507552fa6a3466233d4f96f60f610abd82ff497eb0c7dd3/merged 

root in overlay/804d433b95db0e7cf507552fa6a3466233d4f96f60f610abd82ff497eb0c7dd3/merged 
❯ ls
app  etc

root in overlay/804d433b95db0e7cf507552fa6a3466233d4f96f60f610abd82ff497eb0c7dd3/merged 
❯ ls app         
calibre

root in overlay/804d433b95db0e7cf507552fa6a3466233d4f96f60f610abd82ff497eb0c7dd3/merged 
❯ ls app/calibre     
bin      calibre-complete   calibredb      calibre-parallel     calibre-server  ebook-convert  ebook-edit  ebook-polish  fetch-ebook-metadata  libexec  lrfviewer  markdown-calibre  resources     web2disk
calibre  calibre-customize  calibre-debug  calibre_postinstall  calibre-smtp    ebook-device   ebook-meta  ebook-viewer  lib                   lrf2lrs  lrs2lrf    plugins           translations

root in overlay/804d433b95db0e7cf507552fa6a3466233d4f96f60f610abd82ff497eb0c7dd3/merged 
❯ 

The age of the image also tracks with the release for Calibre itself (see https://github.com/kovidgoyal/calibre/releases/tag/v5.33.2) from December 2021.

---

I would assume this is something that could happen with other similar tools that keeps versions up to date, as in it would pick the version with the higher version number.

Is this some thing that can corrected in the container registry, i.e by dropping these older versions that are unrelated to the calbre-web project?

[aptalca]

https://www.linuxserver.io/blog/docker-tags-so-many-tags-so-little-time#semver-info

[husjon]

I did read it and I do understand the reasoning for not supporting SemVer, I can even accept that.
What I'm saying is that the registry for this image does contain images for multiple projects.
That's what I meant by poisoned with other projects versions

I can even understand why this happened, that the registry for this image was based on calibre and then adjusted later on, stuff like this happens all the time.

[aptalca]

We do not just not support SemVer. We flat out recommend against it. It's a bad idea, especially when combined with Renovate and/or auto updates.

What I'm saying is that the registry for this image does contain images for multiple projects.
That's what I meant by poisoned with other projects versions

That is not correct. That version is not another project's version or a different project's image. It's a pseudo semver based on a calibre-web version, part of the failed experiment outlined in there.

[husjon]

We flat out recommend against it

And that is fine, I fully accept that.
I do see that you do have Dynamic tags (https://www.linuxserver.io/blog/docker-tags-so-many-tags-so-little-time#3-version-tag-dynamic), which kinda solves that problem anyways.

That is not correct. That version is not another project's version or a different project's image. It's a pseudo semver based on a calibre-web version, part of the failed experiment outlined in there.

I literally pulled the image and inspected the content, showing that the files were from Calibre from December 2021.
Calibre-web has never had a version above 0.6.x, no tags, no releases, anything.
If you think that is was an invalid experiment I want you to replicate the steps, it takes just a few seconds to do.

[aptalca]

This is the release in question: https://github.com/linuxserver/docker-calibre-web/releases/tag/calibre-v5.33.2-ls1

Full version (static docker tag) is calibre-v5.33.2-ls1

Branch tag is calibre, used to host a docker mod for this calibre-web image, which injected the calibre binary into calibre-web for ebook conversion
Upstream Version was v5.33.2
Our build version for the mod was ls1

The mod has since moved to the dedicated mods repo: https://github.com/linuxserver/docker-mods/tree/universal-calibre

Nothing has been poisoned. Nothing from outside of this repo was accidentally pushed or published.

[husjon]

Alright, that makes sense.

As you can probably understand, when there are vastly different versions present and the content within these versions are from 2 different projects, this can create a bit of confusion.

It is strange that these docker mod versions are available as plain version tags,
(e.g. calibre-web:5.32.2 instead of only calibre-web:calibre-v5.33.2 and calibre-web:calibre-v5.33.2-ls1).
https://github.com/linuxserver/docker-calibre-web/pkgs/container/calibre-web/11304060?tag=5.33.2

I see that this formatting was not in the mod version 5.28.0 or earlier.
It was added in 5.29.0 then omitted in 5.34.0, before the mod was dropped completely.

Poisoning was a bit too strong of a wording, I'm sorry for that. :)

In any case, I understand why it is the way it is now, thanks.