Bug#729203: CTTE and reasonable solutions
First of all, thank you very much for CC'ing me, as I am not receiving
things from this bug report (despite having tried to subscribe to the bug).
On Feb 03 2014, anarcat wrote:
> On Fri, 10 Jan 2014 18:52:06 +0200, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> > It is a misconception that making this optional would be a reasonable
> > solution - in reality the hassle that would create would is so huge
> > that no sane person would want to implement the packaging for something
> > like that.
> >
> > Doing that for local use might not be too hard, but doing it 100%
> > correct for a Debian release is simply not feasible.
>
> Can you clarify why this is not possible? The library names of ffmpeg
> and libav now seem perfectly orthogonal and it seems to me it should be
> possible to ship Jessie with both libav and ffmpeg if someone would be
> willing to package the latter.
As Antoine mentioned, with good intentions, it is possible to ship ffmpeg in
Debian in time for the release of jessie. The problem is that there may not
be as many good intentions and the wish to work jointly to make this happen,
which is another matter completely (otherwise, why have the libav fork in
the first place?).
> It turns out that this is exactly what this bug report is about: we have
> one brave soul that is volunteering for that effort. He has also clearly
> stated why libav doesn't respond to his requirements.
Indeed, some people say that I like to work on packaging some hard to crack
packages (like handbrake, which required me to, essentially, patch the hell
out of it to make it compile and work work with Debian's libav and to avoid
the abundant use of embedded libraries; or the packaging of mongodb, which
was, essentially, dormant for some time, with bazillion embedded libraries
again, being used---it now has found some good hands to maintain it).
Regarding libav, it really, really falls short on many places in comparison
with ffmpeg. I can list features that it today, but they will be implemented
(well, some not) and, then, ffmpeg will have moved on with further useful
features that will be missing from libav and so on.
> If you have objections against ffmpeg being packaged in Debian, I suggest
> you clarify those instead of requiring Rogério to address the CTTE right
> away, which seems to me a little abusive.
Indeed, seeing the whole init system decision (which I have been following
*every* single day quietly), I can only think that some (not all) can not
really judge the technical merits of some software.
Furthermore, technical excellence (even in the ideal case or in the more
pragmatic sense of "well, it is not perfect, but it provides working
features that people really *need*") is being left behind with the current
decisions that Debian has taken.
> Rogério, I would suggest you go ahead with the packaging and an upload,
> don't let the flames fan your enthousiasm.
Thanks for the encouragement, Antoine. I am mostly paralized with this
situation and I don't really know how to proceed. I think that the forces of
having to potentially fight the tech-ctte, the pkg-multimedia-team, the
ftp-masters and some other people is that is preventing me right now from
packaging ffmpeg all by myself.
If other people join me in the work (and, most importantly, the
argumentation---well, the ffmpeg upstream team has been wonderfully
supportive of the initiative), then I may go on and package this thing.
Thanks for the support,
--
Rogério Brito : rbrito@{ime.usp.br,gmail.com} : GPG key 4096R/BCFCAAAA
http://cynic.cc/blog/ : github.com/rbrito : profiles.google.com/rbrito
DebianQA: http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=rbrito%40ime.usp.br
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