Can't open iOS 18 generated photos

[hadess]

Using the current GIMP Flatpak, and opening files generated by an iOS 18 device, I get either:
Loading HEIF image failed: Invalid input: Unspecified: Metadata not correctly assigned to image
or
Loading HEIF image failed: Invalid input: Unspecified: Too many auxiliary image references
as error messages.

iOS 18 support is one of the things that the 1.18 branch of libheif adds:
https://github.com/strukturag/libheif/releases/tag/v1.18.0

735387a says libheif is "abandoned" forcing < 1.18.0 versions, but doesn't link to why newer versions aren't considered (either here, or in the GNOME GitLab).

[brunvonlope]

libheif module stopped to be updated in the stable flatpak probably due to API incompatibilities. See: #338 (comment)

We use the most recent libheif on the beta one.

[hadess]

libheif module stopped to be updated in the stable flatpak probably due to API incompatibilities. See: #338 (comment)

I couldn't find an upstream bug report, or anything else that would explain what this "incompatibility" was. Do you have a reference for it?

[brunvonlope]

I couldn't find an upstream bug report

Long response: in the linked MR I observed that building libheif with the version mentioned in the MR description was making GIMP unable to export to HEIC and AVIF. First, I just ignored the bug but them flathub bot was becoming annoying so in a further MR I "abandoned" the module to avoid flathub creating new automatic MRs.

I don't know the reason for it so I can't explain "why". If I know, I would pushed a fix. The "API" thing mentioned in this issue is merely a guess. And I didn't opened any issue about this.

[hadess]

The beta worked for my needs. I would say that we should leave this open until beta is the stable branch, so it registers as a known issue, and we can work on backporting whatever fixes are necessary if somebody wants it fixed properly.