Ubuntu 17.10 comes with Firebird 3.0.2

Ubuntu 17.10 is released and it comes with Firebird 3.0.2 (Latest stable version)

Thanks to Damyan  Ivanov and Debian project contributors to Firebird packages

Visual Studio 2017 Version 15.4 Released

You can now use CMake for Linux C++ development in Visual Studio

That could be interesting in cross compiling Firebird from Windows side to Linux/WSL

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/visualstudio/2017/10/10/visual-studio-2017-version-15-4-released/

Firebird 3 on Apple IOS

One side effect of new Firebird 3.0.3 builds for Apple Macosx is that now there is a Mach-O dynamically linked shared library for arm_v7 that can be used on IOS.
You can ask for details on Firebird-devel 
ps: For Firebird 2.5.x there is a build on Paul's blog also Egor Pugin created Cmake files for IOS Builds (I didn't tested that route yet)

Firebird 4.0 Alpha 1 release is available for testing

Firebird Project announces the first Alpha release of Firebird 4.0, the next major version of the Firebird relational database, which is now available for testing.

ADO.NET provider 5.11.0.0 for Firebird is ready (with .NET Standard 2.0 support)

New version 5.11.0.0 of ADO.NET provider for Firebird is ready for download. This release is about .NET Standard 2.0. Now the .NET Standard 2.0, with all the new APIs supported, version is available. Another new feature is support for passing key over the wire for encrypted databases (you need to have server side plugin for this feature, i.e. this from IBPhoenix). New connection string property crypt key is available for that. The value is base64 encoded data representing the key.

Jaybird 3 with Firebird 3 embedded example

Mark Rotteveel published a guide and example program using Firebird 3 Embedded with Jaybird 3. The sample you can find it on https://github.com/mrotteveel/jaybird-embedded-example.

Firebird inside Firebird in DotNet External Engine (FbNetExternalEngine)

You can load any .NET code in FbNetExternalEngine also as Proof Of Concept you can also load Firebird Embedded inside that in server (Firebird inside Firebird in DotNet External Engine).

Firebird 3.0.3 for MacOSX (Beta)

A beta version of a 64bit Firebird 3.0.3 for MacOSX is now available as a download for those of you who might be interested in trying it. http://www.ibphoenix.com/download/firebird/30

Changing the HASH function (Firebird CORE-4436)

There is an interesting discussion on firebird-devel about changing and extending the hash function in Firebird (related to CORE-4436)

Firebird support for Decfloat will be enabled in Firebird 4.0

Firebird support for Decfloat will be enabled in Firebird 4.0 (Can be tested with latest snapshots)

Decfloat is a new SQL:2016 standard type introduced by IBM in DB2

Firebird Documentation Funding 2017

Documentation Funding 2017 Reached 5000$ of the 5000$ Goal https://www.firebirdsql.org/en/doc-funding-2017/

The Firebird Project's 2017 project is to translate into English the Firebird Developer Guide, a Russian-language work sponsored by IBSurgeon and Moscow Exchange, edit and review it and publish it in the project's documentation library. For this project, as ever, we need funding. This is your opportunity to make it happen, by contributing whatever you can to our crowdfunding campaign.

HSQLDB binary format import

Tender approved in the budget by the TDF board


In order to remove the legacy Java / HSQLDB database completely, and move fully to Firebird in LibreOffice 5.4 it is necessary to be able to import old document data with high fidelity from the HSQLDB binary file format which we have used (for performance) inside so many of our existing ODB files. This task involves reading the existing (reasonably simple) Java serialization code, and writing an (import only) filter to import this data safely into base.

LibreOffice bug #106866 is now fixed : When I change the field length of the result is multiplied by 4 each time (firebird, varchar)

Bunth Tamás committed a patch related to issue #106866: query character size instead of bytes

It has been pushed to "master":

It will be available in 5.4.0. The patch should be included in the daily builds available at 

http://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours.

More information about daily builds can be found at: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds 

Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.

Firebird bug CORE-5452 is fixed : Segfault when engine's dynamic library is unloaded right after closing worker threads

Firebird bug CORE-5452 is fixed http://tracker.firebirdsql.org/browse/CORE-5452

The issue was reported multiple times in Firebird devel list, I will mention here Damyan Ivanov (Debian) and Stephan Bergmann. (RedHat)

And related commit in Firebird 3.0 branch

https://github.com/FirebirdSQL/firebird/commit/40f782ae3e918c4f3842571ff8064be1c4f54961

Stephan Bergmann contributed the patch to LibreOffice in external/firebird

LibreOffice bug #103074 : Implement Boolean Type for Firebird driver is now fixed

Bunth Tamás committed a patch related to issue #103074 : Implement Boolean Type for FB driver .
It has been pushed to "master":

It will be available in 5.4.0.

The patch should be included in the daily builds available at
http://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours. More
information about daily builds can be found at:
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds

Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.

ps:
From the list a of Firebird integration blockers there are only a few left

Listed blockers:

   70425: EDITING: Embedded Firebird - Copying integer values from Calc to Base impossible  See dependency tree for bug 70425
   70506: EDITING: Embedded Firebird - Alias in queries are ignored  See dependency tree for bug 70506
   104316: FIREBIRD 3 : attempting to open a Firebird 3 embedded ODB database file fails to draw all UI elements, causes general LibreOffice UI malfunction

Firebird 3 by default in LibreOffice 5.4

Lots of missing features & big bugs were fixed recently .
All of the blockers that were initially mentioned on tracking bug are now fixed.

Lionel mentioned that he added a few more blockers that needs to be fixed until Firebird will be switched by default :

I went over
https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=firebird

and added a few open bugs to the blocker bug
https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/51780

based on their description (and NEW instead of UNCONFIRMED status)
only, without reading the bug log in great detail.

Tamás Bunth (Wastack) agreed that 6 months time frame is more than enough to fix bugs that will appear

I agree, it would be reasonable to wait a half year. Until that we can
fix the already found and the upcoming bugs, solve the backward
incompatibility. Even if those can be solved quickly we can upgrade to
the c++ API. 

Another issue is importing old hsqldb databases without java installed

It requires making a read-only parser for the HSQLDB "cached" table
data format in another language than Java. Most definitely possible,
the format may even be better documented than "read the source code".

Service for migrating Firebird 2.5 format to Firebird 3.0

On Libreoffice Devel there is a thread about migration of the already created odb files with 2.5 databases inside (fdb) but also about the forward and backward compatibility of the Firebird backup archive (fbk).
https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2016-November/075953.html

Lionel added notes about upgrading in the wiki :

People trade privacy for convenience or the other way round all the time. People that in this case favor convenience can use the hypothetical web service. People that favor privacy can follow the instructions at
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Base/FirebirdSQL#Older_Firebird_databases(which the web service should point towards for information).While I'm not exactly lobbying for this web service, we are a volunteer-driven organisation and if Tamás feels like doing it, all the merrier.

Lionel Elie Mamane committed a patch related to this issue tdf#101789 : Firebird 3 - fails to build on OSX 10.11.x with clang

Lionel Elie Mamane committed a patch related to this issue tdf#101789 Firebird 3 - fails to build on OSX 10.11.x with clang.

It has been pushed to "master": tdf#101789 work around DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH limitations on newer MacOS X.

An alternative fix has been in place ever since Stephan Bergmann commit " Allow external/firebird to be built with a custom SHELL under Mac OS X 10.11".

Bunth Tamás commited a few patches related to Firebird driver

Tamás committed a patch related to tdf#74172 issue.
Ensure prepared while setting numeric
It has been pushed to "master":
It will be available in 5.3.0. The patch should be included in the daily builds available at http://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours.
More information about daily builds can be found at: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds
Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.

Another commit is just code refactoring : get table name from resultset simply. There is a much simpler way to access table name in ResultSetMetadata in Firebird sdbc.

Bunth Tamás commited a patch for LibreOffice bug #74172 : use DECIMAL and NUMERIC data types

 Bunth Tamás commited  a patch for bug #74172 use DECIMAL and NUMERIC data types

From the list a of Firebird integration blockers there are only a few left

Listed blockers:
  bug 69949 - table editor should support the autoincrement
  bug 71009 - relationship management not implemented in GUI
  bug 71251 - Creating table from default choices via wizard fails
  bug 74019 - Any table or select query having more than 10 fields fails
  bug 74172 - no data type DECIMAL/NUMERIC 
  bug 76072 - view creation not implemented