[FFmpeg-devel] Project orientation

[Kieran Kunhya]

Going back to the original point in hand.
Many patches aren't getting reviewed and pushed any more.

In part this is because in 2020 whether we like it or not mailing
lists are not the way to do Git based development.
The kernel is the exception to the rule, as Linus says it has a whole
load of grey-bearded system maintainers who are paid full time to work
on it.

For new contributors git send-email is annoying. For people wanting to
push, the .mbox format is annoying, Gmail doesn't support it any more.
And you can't get new contributors to start using CLI based email
clients or run their own mail server, that's not going to happen.

A solution like Gitlab is the only way forward. It has worked well for
dav1d, it can run regression tests on all platforms for all commits:
https://code.videolan.org/videolan/dav1d

Merges are done with one push of a button. Yes, the branch sprawl is
not great but it's better than now.
It has inline patch reviews which are nice.

Whether we like it or not web interfaces are the way 95% of the world
does Git and we have to move with the times.

Kieran

On Sun, Jul 5, 2020 at 5:38 PM Kieran Kunhya <kieran618 at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> > > People aren't using it because people don't use MPEG-2.
> > > There is no maintenance to be done on a format that's 25 years old, do
> > > you want me to randomly change cosmetics to make you feel happy?
> >
> > If you'd get off your high horse for once, that would make me feel happy.
>
> Please let me know what "maintenance" you'd like me to do on x262?
>
> > I don't think I told anybody to implement the missing features for free.
> > But I do believe that payed or free development has a higher chance of
> > happening if existing code is already available in a popular
> > package/project. And yes, I believe that some "maintenance burden" should
> > be accepted by the base project to give more chance to further
> > advancement, payed or free.
>
> It's not your pejorative to say that x264 developers have to accept
> and maintain a merge back of x262.
> Also this is quite complex now owing the combined 8/10-bit single
> binary. Furthermore any change to H.264 they would now have to test
> and maintain for MPEG-2.
> You seem to imply that this work is quite simple which is easy for you
> to say when you are the one not doing it.
> Do you plan to do this work?
>
> Kieran