Hi Reinhard, 2014-10-04 19:47 GMT+02:00 Reinhard Tartler <siret...@gmail.com>: > On Sat, Oct 4, 2014 at 11:46 AM, Bálint Réczey <bal...@balintreczey.hu> wrote: > >> I would also like to add that since Libav and FFmpeg offer different >> features they are different enough to consider them as alternates >> which have the place in Debian on their own right. > > This is the part that makes me very uneasy, because that is a > statement that neither FFmpeg nor Libav upstream hold (Libav largely > ignores what FFmpeg says or does, and FFmpeg claims to have all > features of Libav because of the daily merges). AFAIK FFmpeg also claims to have features which are not present in Libav which makes a difference here.
> > I think it is fair to say that both ffmpeg and libav share a large set > of common functionality. This can be seen by the fact that both > provide a set of competing shared libraries. I am not really convinced > that this sort of competition is helpful to Debian. In fact, I see it > rather harmful, as it fragments our archive in packages in two camps. I see a competition here fruitful rather than harmful. There is an mpv and an xbmc package using ffmpeg in experimental and if there are two camps I'm in both. I try to pick the library which works better for the package in question. I also maintain forked-daapd which I don't plan switching to ffmpeg because I see no advantage of doing so. > > I claim that the majority of packages involved in the last two > libavformat/libavcodec library transitions do not care what package > provides libavformat.so/libavcodec.so (and their dependencies). In > what way does the choice between the libavcodec.so provide help them? > I see a great potential for confusion here, for rather little gain. I would let the maintainers of those packages comment on this part. On thing I can see as a gain is that people will probably prefer Debian's ffmpeg packages over dmo's ones creating less invalid bugs in the BTS. I also expect the features of FFmpeg and Libav to converge since Libav would become more motivated in providing the features already present/still present in FFmpeg. I think the healthy competition created by having both libraries in Debian will create both forks more productive. > > I would rather see people help with improving Libav, which provides a > cleaner and leaner codebase and is supported by an upstream with a > much more responsible development process. Just take the recent > shellshock drama as an example for what happens if you integrate > questionable (or simply too much) functionality in a widely used piece > of software. I would not make big claims here because Libav's security track record is not known to be way better than FFmpeg's. I think there has been great progress lately, the security tracker in Debian shows no open issues for libav now. > > I do understand that VDPAU doesn't work with XBMC when using libav. > Note that this seems to be specific to XBMC, because both mpv and vlc > seem to use libav's VDPAU capabilities just fine. I've raised this on > IRC a few hours ago and it is being looked at. For the future, VDPAU > is currently being overhauled in libav/master. I think it is fair to > say that this issue is being taken seriously, although the reaction > could definitely be more rapid. Thank you for raising the issue. I'm testing the patch right now. Cheers, Balint > > >> PS: I would like to see the Libav and FFmpeg forks merging under any >> name they pick, but this is unlikely to happen before Jessie's freeze. >> Maybe before Jessie+1... > > I fully agree here, and would love to help on making that happen. But > before that can happen, both projects need to sort out the outstanding > trust issues, and agree on a common development process. At least > that's my take-away from the most recent discussion threads on > debian-devel@ and elsewhere. I think both projects should work on getting closer to the other's position and I see this stalled at the moment... > > -- > regards, > Reinhard _______________________________________________ pkg-multimedia-maintainers mailing list pkg-multimedia-maintainers@lists.alioth.debian.org http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pkg-multimedia-maintainers
