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

[Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski]

Hello,

On Friday, 07 August 2015 at 15:36, wm4 wrote:
> On Thu, 6 Aug 2015 23:26:05 +0200
> Andreas Cadhalpun <andreas.cadhalpun at googlemail.com> wrote:
> > On 06.08.2015 00:53, wm4 wrote:
[...]
> > > 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.
> 
> I've had very much experience with distro reality. They tend to make
> everyone's life harder (including their own) by demanding that EVERY
> project uses the same libav* build.

Actually, speaking with my distro hat on, that's more or less the idea,
though I wouldn't say we (Fedora/RPMFusion) are demanding anything.
We do want to ship a single ffmpeg build per distro release and have
each depending project link against it. If that means
back/forward-porting code to adapt the other projects to API changes
then that's the package maintainer's job.

> Well, if you want to do this, you're free to do so. But it's not our
> problem. Feel free to put as much effort into it as you like.

Indeed. Though we may ask politely that FFmpeg project supports a given
ffmpeg release for the ~13 months of a given Fedora release lifecycle.

We would very much appreciate porting-to-new-API guides as that would
make providing patches to depending project upstreams a lot easier.

[...]
> > >> 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.
> 
> Why is it worse? Disk space is very cheap, and the libs aren't that big
> after all. But I know, you distro folks would rather waste a lot of
> time trying to make all projects use the same libs, instead of going
> the easy way.

Yes, we do. Once the initial porting work is done, we can fix security
issues and other bugs in one place, by updating one package. That's
a big maintenance win.

However, at least in Fedora, if a project can't be ported to current library
APIs (for example because it's dead) then we either drop it or introduce
a compat package with an older version of the library. There is strong
preference for the first option though.

> By the way, why the hell do I have to have two versions of Qt and 2
> versions of Python on my Debian system? These are much heavier than
> libav*.

You're right, but there are also much more users of Qt and Python
and there are (I think) much more extensive API changes between Qt 4 and
5, and between python-2.x and 3.x. They were also designed as parallel
installable from the beginning.

Regards,
Dominik (FFmpeg (co-)maintainer in RPMFusion/Fedora)
-- 
MPlayer http://mplayerhq.hu | RPM Fusion http://rpmfusion.org
There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times and
oppression to develop psychic muscles.
	-- from "Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan