[FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] 5 year plan & Inovation

[Ondřej Fiala]

On Thu May 2, 2024 at 10:06 PM CEST, epirat07 wrote:
> On 2 May 2024, at 21:32, Ondřej Fiala wrote:
> > Of course, the quality of your toolings matters a lot. If your email client
> > can't pipe a bunch of emails to a shell command, it's not fit for being used
> > to review git patches. On the other hand, if you possess just some basic shell
> > scripting skills, you can make it do pretty cool things.
>
> So I first have to get proficient in some shell scripting gymnastics
Are you serious that as an open-source dev, you can't even write such a
trivial shell function?

> (and also switch to a completely different terminal-based mail client)
> so I can do proper reviews?
You can use any mail client that works well for you, I just showed what I
personally like. I remember seeing Greg KH (IIRC) using mutt for the same
purpose and I am sure it worked well for him as well. This is quite unlike
the GitHub/GitLab situation where if you use anything other than a recent
mainstream browser, it does not work AT ALL.

> Thats incredibly gatekeeping.
Hardly.

> > Since you felt that there is no way to see additional context, I put together
> > a quick demo[1] showing how easily you can review all files affected by a patch
> > and look at *all* the context. Of course, you could do a bunch of other things to
> > adjust the email-based workflow as desired. And don't forget this is just a demo;
> > I am sure you could come up with something better.
> >
> > [1] https://paste.c-net.org/HansenWeekends
>
> That seems to download some binary file? I have no idea what it is supposed to be.
Sorry about that; the site picked the filename and I forgot to say that it's an mkv
file. Just save it with an `.mkv` suffix and play it with ffplay or similar.

> >> Not everybody can pick a decent email provider with outbound SMTP and a good
> >> reputation. Also not everybody gets to pick their mail agent or their ISP.
> >>
> >> You are just being unwittingly elistist here.
> > I must admit I did not realize how bad some email/internet providers can be
> > when writing this, as I have a fairly average setup and never ran into such
> > issues.
> >
> > But the problem with accessibility is not aleviated by switching away from
> > email, since those forges aren't universally accessible either. I remember how
> > I used to run Pale Moon like 2 years ago. In case you don't know, it's a Firefox
> > fork maintained by a small team. GitHub didn't run on it. Oh, sorry, you don't
> > care about GitHub. But they share the same desig -- hugely complex "web app"
> > that only runs on latest version of major browsers. Everyone else is excluded.
> > When I wanted to contribute to a project I really cared about, I had to download
> > mainline Firefox and do it over that. If I cared even a bit less about it, I
> > wouldn't bother.
> >
> > So how is that any different?
>
> How is it different to download a well maintained recent software and open a website,
> in comparison to learn how to setup a (complex) combination of tools just to be able
> to easily contribute?
It's not a complex combination; it's just git, an email client, and standard
command line tooling.

But sure, if you don't even know basic shell, it might seem complex. I assumed
anyone contributing to a C library with accompanying command-line utilities
would know such basics.