[FFmpeg-devel] Areas needing work

[Michael Niedermayer]

On Mon, Apr 06, 2015 at 07:24:35PM +0100, Derek Buitenhuis wrote:
> On 4/6/2015 4:43 AM, Michael Niedermayer wrote:
> > * Post merge review&cleanup, changes merged from libav would benefit from
> >   people reviewing and MUCH MUCH more importantly also people actually caring
> >   about and taking responsibility not just dumping comments with the idea
> >   "someone" will fix it.
> >   Ideally each area would have a maintainer who takes care of it and
> >   keeps it in good nick.
> 
> How would this actually work? Sit around and wait for merge commits and look at them?

yes
in an ideal world each area would have a maintainer who would only
have to review changes to his area.


> 
> I sometimes do, but most of the commits that are merged are pretty boring stuff, and
> I tend not to read them.
> 
> > * fate clients
> >   we lack a armcc test, a real android test
> >   someone should take over haiku and sunos/solaris fate clients, my haiku VM just
> >   keeps crashing
> 
> Is there a wiki somewhere of stuff that needs to be tested? I shut down all my FATE
> instances 2 weeks ago for maintenance, but will be bringing them + more back up.

ive aded a link to a trac querry to
https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/FATE

that way any ticket with keyword fateclient will be nicely vissible
in the list until its closed, this should allow very easily keeping
track of needed fate clients



> 
> > * our fate server lacks the ability to display a user specified release
> >   this makes the output look quite unwieldy
> >   Timothy was working on a rewrite
> 
> [...]
> 
> > * Paid maintainers
> >   a big problem is that we have areas in the codebase that have no maintainr or
> >   rather noone with sufficient time+will+abilty.
> >   It would help tremendiusly if maintainers could work full
> >   time on maintaining code instead of just a few hours in their free
> >   time
> 
> Where exactly would the money come from? Most, if not all of us have day jobs,
> and/or are students.

it would require a company or NGO to fund it of course, many
companies use FFmpeg and would directly benefit from improvments
in FFmpeg, be that bug fixes, features or anything else.
Thus there is an advantage for a company to fund a full time
maintainer.
Sounds crazy?
well, strictly speaking we do already have paid maintainers in some
areas, its just not many but iam pretty sure some people
in the MAINTAINERs file keep the code in good shape officially as
part of their day job, not fulltime though.


[...]

> 
> > * Decentralize
> >   Too many things are done and admined by me, iam doing security updates to the
> >   servers, doing the git merges, maintaining all releases, maintaining half the
> >   fate clients, submitting data to coverity and doing all the crap that noone
> >   else wants to do.
> 
> It's not really documented all the stuff which needs to be done, such as server updates,
> or who handles them and pay, etc. Basically what Timothy said.
> 
> >   Does the community care so little that they want me to be a single point of
> >   failure?
> 
> Nobody wants that. I don't recall any previous requests for help with the overhead work
> such as server admin though.

as we already are speaking of this
we need to move things to a new server (we already have one but
against expectations moving things over is happening at a snails pace)
ATM fate-suite and samples are on the new server, rest is still on the
old. The reason for the need to move is the aging platform and
potential lack of future security support for it ...
maybe beastd and lou can comment on this as beastd was the one who did
most of the work that was done sofar and lou seemed to be willing to
help.
question is do we need another volunteer to make this move happen?


> 
> >   We need people to take some of this over at least on the basis of a backup
> >   in case iam unavailable for whatever reason, and i think it should ideally
> >   be people who do not yet have their daily work shedule overflowing with ffmpeg
> >   work but better new volunteers.
> 
> I don't mind pitching in a small amount, and I can do a bit during work hours perhaps
> (whithin sanity/reason), but I also have a busy life with travel and significant
> other, etc.
> 
> The main problem is it is not clear where or how to go about it, or what can be volunteered.
> 
> > * Conferences / exhibitions, public stuff
> >   Theres a conference, linuxtag, fosdem, whatever, wherever in your local area
> >   and you think FFmpeg should be represented there ?
> 
> FWIW, I attend FOSDEM and VDD representing both FFmpeg and Libav as well as $dayjob,
> (just to make sure everyone on every side hates me ;)). I also talked at IBC at EBU's
> booth about open source media, and will be in Berlin for SMPTE's circlejerk^Wforum
> in May, as talking about open source media (FFmpeg especially). I'm not the only
> one, and I think this is pretty well covered in recent years.

ok, great & thanks

[...]
-- 
Michael     GnuPG fingerprint: 9FF2128B147EF6730BADF133611EC787040B0FAB

The real ebay dictionary, page 3
"Rare item" - "Common item with rare defect or maybe just a lie"
"Professional" - "'Toy' made in china, not functional except as doorstop"
"Experts will know" - "The seller hopes you are not an expert"
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