[MPlayer-DOCS] letter to distro mplayer packagers?

[Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski]

Hi,

On Tuesday, 29 November 2005 at 01:50, Diego Biurrun wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 28, 2005 at 09:46:30AM +0100, Christian Marillat wrote:
> > Diego Biurrun <diego at biurrun.de> writes:
> > 
> > > First off the package is somewhat unwieldy.  The patch that gets applied
> > > is 268kb compressed, which is massive.  Among other things it contains a
> > > uuencoded version of the MPlayer default skin, Blue.  Why this is done
> > > the way it is done remains a mystery to me.
> > 
> > Yes, because gmplayer need a default skin otherwise gmplayer doesn't
> > start.
> 
> I know that of course.  Let me rephrase my unclear words:
> 
> Why you include a skin uuencoded in the packaging patch and not create a
> skin package that the mplayer-gui package depends on remains a mystery
> to me.

I don't know about the uuencode part, but including the Blue skin in the
gui package isn't a bad idea. I included it in my mplayer-gui RPM recently,
after getting tired of users unable to grasp the concept of installing two
RPMs at once. It doesn't add much maintenance overhead and saves me a lot
of support questions.

[...]
> > x11 is the only default which work in all cases. I think I'll add
> > "xv,x11" in the next package who is much better.
> 
> Better, but leaving it out altogether would do the trick as well.

Agreed.

> > > You added quite a few mime-types to the mplayer.desktop file. This is
> > > good. I took them all, added a few more and committed everything to CVS.
> > > Since the mplayer.desktop file is also hard-coded into the packaging
> > > patch, you may not pick this up automatically.
> > 
> > I add nothing. I've simply packaged a desktop file before you and
> > because your changelog is unreadable (the pre8 is more than 130 lines)
> > I've not seen you have added a desktop file in pre4.
> 
> Yes, there are a lot of changes.  Do you have a suggestion how we could
> make our changelogs more readable?

I'd like to hear about that, too. Maybe I can use some ideas in my changelogs.

> Please just submit such things to us.  We'll let you know whether we
> already have it or not.

Yes, please do.

> > > We gladly accept patches from packagers.  Unfortunately we have not been
> > > getting any from you, Christian.  You apply many small patches to your
> > > packages, yet AFAICT most of the problems they aim to fix are already
> > > resolved in upstream CVS.
> > 
> > I hope you know why I've never send any patches or suggestions to you ?
> 
> I have no idea.
> 
> Are you referring to some old quarrel with Gabucino (and Arpi) maybe?
> If that should be the case then let us please forget about stories from
> a few years ago and move on.

And if you're referring to my badmouthing, I apologize (again). I promise
not to repeat such mistakes in the future.

Regards,
R.

PS. Oh yes, Christian's mail got bounced by my server because his smtp
server is on some blacklist. I've whitelisted it so there shouldn't be
a problem from now on.

-- 
MPlayer RPMs maintainer: http://rpm.greysector.net/mplayer/
"I am Grey. I stand between the candle and the star. We are Grey.
 We stand between the darkness ... and the light."
        -- Delenn in Grey Council in Babylon 5:"Babylon Squared"