The GRPC server in opm produces random channel order for FBC catalogs

[cdjohnson]

We have a large catalog. We just converted it from sqlite to fbc:
FBC:
icr.io/cpopen/ibm-operator-catalog:latest

SQLITE:
icr.io/cpopen/ibm-operator-catalog:sqlite-latest

It looks like the order in which the channels are being returned via the GetPackage GRPC API in the FBC catalog is non-deterministic, whereas they appeared either in lexicographical ascending order or registry add <bundle> order (not sure which). This results in various clients to display the channels in a random order, whereas they were being displayed in a seemingly-sorted order before (e.g. the OpenShift Console).

To reproduce:

$ podman run -d --name catalog -p 50051:50051 "icr.io/cpopen/ibm-operator-catalog:latest"
$ grpcurl -plaintext  -d '{"name":"ibm-mq"}' localhost:50051 api.Registry/GetPackage | jq -r .channels[].csvName
ibm-mq.v2.0.8
ibm-mq.v2.1.0
ibm-mq.v1.2.0
ibm-mq.v1.6.0
ibm-mq.v1.7.0
ibm-mq.v1.8.2
ibm-mq.v1.5.0
ibm-mq.v2.2.2
ibm-mq.v2.3.0
ibm-mq.v1.0.0
ibm-mq.v1.1.0
ibm-mq.v1.3.8
ibm-mq.v1.4.0

$ grpcurl -plaintext  -d '{"name":"ibm-mq"}' localhost:50051 api.Registry/GetPackage | jq -r .channels[].csvName
ibm-mq.v1.0.0
ibm-mq.v1.1.0
ibm-mq.v1.3.8
ibm-mq.v1.4.0
ibm-mq.v1.5.0
ibm-mq.v2.2.2
ibm-mq.v2.3.0
ibm-mq.v1.2.0
ibm-mq.v1.6.0
ibm-mq.v1.7.0
ibm-mq.v1.8.2
ibm-mq.v2.0.8
ibm-mq.v2.1.0

vs the sqlite version:

$ podman run -d --name catalog -p 50051:50051 "icr.io/cpopen/ibm-operator-catalog:sqlite-latest"
$ grpcurl -plaintext  -d '{"name":"ibm-mq"}' localhost:50051 api.Registry/GetPackage | jq -r .channels[].csvName
ibm-mq.v1.0.0
ibm-mq.v1.1.0
ibm-mq.v1.2.0
ibm-mq.v1.3.8
ibm-mq.v1.4.0
ibm-mq.v1.5.0
ibm-mq.v1.6.0
ibm-mq.v1.7.0
ibm-mq.v1.8.2
ibm-mq.v2.0.7
ibm-mq.v2.1.0
ibm-mq.v2.2.2

$ grpcurl -plaintext  -d '{"name":"ibm-mq"}' localhost:50051 api.Registry/GetPackage | jq -r .channels[].csvName
ibm-mq.v1.0.0
ibm-mq.v1.1.0
ibm-mq.v1.2.0
ibm-mq.v1.3.8
ibm-mq.v1.4.0
ibm-mq.v1.5.0
ibm-mq.v1.6.0
ibm-mq.v1.7.0
ibm-mq.v1.8.2
ibm-mq.v2.0.7
ibm-mq.v2.1.0
ibm-mq.v2.2.2

[awgreene]

Thanks @cdjohnson! We'll take a closer look a this shortly.

[joelanford]

Some context in a slack thread is here: https://kubernetes.slack.com/archives/C0181L6JYQ2/p1677097814470179?thread_ts=1676998367.355039&cid=C0181L6JYQ2