[FFmpeg-devel] [libav-devel] [PATCH 0/20] removal of deprecated features

[Andreas Cadhalpun]

On 06.08.2015 00:53, wm4 wrote:
> Well, you sure like to list a lot of projects.

No, I don't. I'd like it much more if the list was empty.

> But what you don't say
> is that many of these are either definitely dead (mplayer2 comes to
> mind),

One is not many. But OK, let's get rid of mplayer2 [1].

> or are ancient releases of software which fixed their API usage
> later (like my own project, and probably most other reasonable active
> projects).

Now I'm curious what your own project is.
I thought you were involved with mpv, but that still uses the deprecated
FF_API_AUDIOCONVERT [2].

Projects like blender, gst-libav or mplayer are reasonably recent in Debian
and active upstream. But still they use deprecated APIs.

> Why do we have to suffer because Debian tries to compile ancient
> releases against newer ffmpeg/libav releases? (How does that even make
> sense?)

This is just your prejudice that doesn't have much to do with reality.

> And then there's the category of projects that are "alive", but barely
> care about anything unless being severely prodded. I'm not sure why we
> should suffer forever just to accommodate these projects. They had more
> than enough time.

It's actually the other projects that have to suffer, because FFmpeg/Libav
breaks it's API. Time alone is not enough, there also needs to be good
documentation about API replacements and that is currently insufficient.

> I feel like I'm repeating myself and others, but I don't remember
> whether you acknowledged these arguments.

I'm seeing more dramatic words than good arguments in your mail.

>> Better documentation would surely be helpful.
> 
> Many of these are non-trivial. Project authors either update their
> code, or the project dies. It's simple. If you don't want this, keep an
> old ffmpeg/libav package around for them. But you distro peoples want a
> single libavcodec package, no matter how much this fucking tortures
> everyone.

So instead of keeping a little bit of deprecated code, everyone should
keep multiple copies of libavcodec?
This is several orders of magnitude worse.

Best regards,
Andreas


1: https://bugs.debian.org/794817
2: https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/blob/master/audio/filter/af_lavcac3enc.c#L29