[FFmpeg-devel] next release

James Almer jamrial at gmail.com
Wed Oct 6 15:41:57 EEST 2021


On 10/6/2021 6:57 AM, Michael Niedermayer wrote:
> Hi
> 
> Should the next release be called "LTS"?
> Should the next release be 4.5 or 5.0 ?

5.0. The major bump removed old core API, so it needs to be reflected in 
more ways than just soname.

> Should it be made in december 2021 ? (as was suggested in jbs release mail)

Seeing it's a huge departure from 4.x, the chances for it to be included 
by Debian and Ubuntu LTS (Which comes out next April) depends on all 
packages that use libav* having migrated to the new APIs.
I want to believe this already happened, considering the most important 
one is in place since like ffmpeg 3.0 from many years ago, but you never 
know. My point is, if this isn't the case by the time Debian and Ubuntu 
freeze, they will skip 5.0 for their upcoming releases, keep using 4.4, 
and that one will therefore become an LTS release by force, like it's 
currently the case with 4.3, 4.1, and 3.2.

Also, wouldn't it be better to make the last release using a given 
soname the LTS, instead of the first? The codebase will be more mature 
by then, it could potentially include pre-bump deprecations (like 
av_packet_init in 4.4) to reduce their widespread use and ensure library 
users have an easier time migrating in the future, and it would probably 
simplify backporting fixes from master (Right now there are more 
conflicts backporting to 4.1 than to 4.4, for example).

> 
> thx
> 
> 
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