Re: Keep non-gnome2.6 package out of the discussion please [was: GNOME 2.6 definitely not ready for unstable]
[let's Reply-To the gnome-gtk list, as this is clearly starting to
exceeed debian-release issues, as Sebastian pointed out]
On Sun, 23 May 2004, Martin Schulze wrote:
> Martin-Éric Racine wrote:
> > > Le dim, 23/05/2004 à 01:36 +0300, Martin-Éric Racine a écrit :
> > > > Today, Rhythmbox 0.8.4 entered unstable, with rather unpleasant consequences
> > >
> > > rhythmbox is not related to gnome2.6 at all,
> >
> > That's incorrect. Configuration of the audio sink used by Rhythmbox requires
> > gnome-media 2.6.x, which is definitely a part of GNOME 2.6.
>
> If Rhythmbox is a third-party-program from the point of view of
> GNOME, why does it mean that GNOME 2.6 is not suited for unstable
> when in fact the new Rhythmbox is not suited for unstable since
> it doesn't work with the packages in unstable but only with the
> ones from GNOME 2.6?
>
> Did I miss something?
What you probably meant to say is that Rhythmbox is not considered a part of
gnome-core, which is indeed technically correct.
However, from an end-user's point of view, something that requires upgrading
core components from a newer release, IS related to that new thing, because it
requires upgrading something else besides the application itself.
> > Seb: I realize you're anxious to get GNOME 2.6 into unstable, but Rhythmbox
> > proved that you want to go too far too fast. Soon, but not now.
>
> I'd rather say that Rhythmbox was too fast and should have been
> uploaded to experimental instead of unstable. For me it looks
> more like a bug or Rhythmbox/its maintainer than of GNOME 2.6.
If I'm not mistaken, it had been there for a while. The maintainers just decided
that it was finally ready to enter unstable yesterday.
In practice, even once I manually fixed things following Sebastian's e-mail
(something which an end-user should NEVER be expect to do - it either works
right out of the box, or it doesn't), it turned out that the newer Rhythmbox has
lost the ability to play several types of mp3 files and streams.
This is NOT a critic of Sebastian's otherwise excellent work as a maintainer,
but it is yet another proof that Rhythmbox was not ready. That and, given how
Sebastian is the one that replied to my Rhythmbox bug and how he also is the one
advocating entry of GNMOE 2.6 into unstable, I indeed have every reasons to
beleive that a few more corners might have been cut in GNOME 2.6, the same way
as Rhythmbox was released a tad too hastily.
Again, I'm quite confident that every bug will eventualy be nailed down, but
this butched Rhythmbox release makes me really nervous about seeing GNOME 2.6
enter unstable at _this_ stage. It just feels like it needs more testing.
Getting replies along the lines of "maybe you're just too stupid to use
gconf-editor" when gconfd's lack of ability to respun flawlessly and quickly
after a schema has been upgraded is clearly something that happens out of no
fault on the user's part, was downright rude on Sebastian's part. Given this, I
was entirely in my right to yell back at him.
Anyhow, the Rhythmbox situation results in two regressions:
1) configuration keys whose values are the same (esdsink is still called esdsink
in gstreamer 0.8, it just resides in a different subfolder in gconf-editor), but
who belong to different releases of gstreamer, need to be manually upgraded by
the user, using arcane tools. This should have been automatically copied from
the 0.6 keys, the first time a 0.8.x Rhythmbox version is run.
2) Gstreamer itself clearly has lost the ability to playback certain types of
mp3 files and streams. This cripples Rhythmbox and, if the Gstreamer backend was
selected, also affects Totem and possibly other applications that are quite
likely being recompiled to use release 0.8. This is somewhat more serious,
because it affects the quality of several end-user applications.
--
Martin-Éric Racine, ICT Consultant
http://www.pp.fishpool.fi/~q-funk/
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