Old project does not open: Failed to determine project version.

[Magnesus]

Commit Hash 7fa69ea5

Platform Ubuntu 22.04

Summary Project created in an older version of Olive 0.2 (default ubuntu version: 20200620-2ubuntu4) does not open in newest nightly. I get "Failed to determine project version." error. The project file seems to be XML while the new project files that the nightly saves seem to be binary. The file starts like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<olive>
    <version>0.2.0</version>
    <project>
        <url>/ra/whiskers/export/trailer/trailer1.ove</url>
        <folder name="" ptr="140478448145776">

...

Additional Information / Output

[Magnesus]

Full project file is here: http://magory.net/g/whiskers/trailer1.ove - I want to update to newest nightly because the version of Olive included in Ubuntu 22.04 repositories crashes on export.

[itsmattkc]

The version you mention is from over 3 years ago when Olive was in a much earlier state of development. Back then, Olive was barely even a proof of concept, so there was no project backwards compatibility (a system for handling project versions was only added over a year later in 2021). And in that time, Olive has changed so much that realistically it isn't feasible to add support for such a more primitive version.

I apologize for the inconvenience, but it was not our choice for Ubuntu/Debian to host such an old version of Olive in their repositories. We have always been clear that Olive is alpha software that's still in development. We never requested for them to include and deploy a random commit from 3 years ago, and have never endorsed or recommended anyone to use it. In the coming months I'll probably have to ask them to remove it to prevent further confusion.

[Magnesus]

Well, shame the new format is binary because if it was XML I could upgrade the old project file by hand or by simple script to be compatible with the new version. Binary means there is a risk of such incompatibility happening again in the future.

[itsmattkc]

The format is actually still XML, it's just compressed by default. You can still save an uncompressed file by selecting "uncompressed XML" in Olive's save dialog, or you can run olive-editor -d <file> to decompress it outside of the program.

Like I said though, a lot has changed. I wouldn't be confident that it would be easier to upgrade the file than it would be to remake it.