Re: Discussing defaults (Was: [gentoo-dev] Re: [gentoo-commits] gentoo-x86 commit in virtual/ffmpeg: ffmpeg-9.ebuild ChangeLog ffmpeg-0.10.2-r1.ebuild)

[Alexis Ballier <aballier@gentoo.org>]

On Tue, 12 Feb 2013 12:16:22 +0100
Luca Barbato <lu_zero@gentoo.org> wrote:

> On 12/02/13 08:21, Ian Whyman wrote:
> > Guys,
> > 
> > Can we not just have a developer wide vote or something? This 
> > instance clearly not going to resole itself.
> 
> It is a little bikeshed. Originally the virtual was ordered in a
> way, then ordered in another and now we are discussing which one is
> better for the user after we turned it around again.

That's what he's suggesting to vote about. I consider my concerns
important and, as such, will continue to use FFmpeg but e.g. your
arguments are valid and important too and in the end it boils down to
what one considers more important.
So far I have been the only one voicing against libav being the
default (besides comments on my blog) so I can live with it without
vote since it is clear I am minority. Were there more people favoring
FFmpeg I would say a kind of vote is needed, but so far I don't think
it's worth it.

> There isn't ANYTHING that is impacting users beside those that they
> might get the next versions of gst-libav just end up with a runtime
> error if they use ffmpeg (if the upstream authors follow up with their
> plan) or those users wanting to use mencoder might get some compile
> errors if I forgot to update the compatibility patch after somebody
> bumped w/out testing.

Well, this is important. You, as libav developer, could very well try
to convince gst-libav people that it's stupid to ban FFmpeg for no
technical reason and that the big fat warning when not using the
internal version is more due to historical reasons than anything recent
since all decent distributions do not use their bundled libav version.
mplayer is not that libav-hater as you may think since I believe some
libav-compatibility fixes landed before 1.1 (maybe not all, but at
least the PIX_FMT hell was resolved).

> It really boils down to decide to be extra careful with mplayer and
> xbmc or being extra careful with gst-libav and maybe vlc.

IMHO this has to be done whatever the default is.

> Sadly this whole discussion turned to discussing who is right or
> wrong, who is the fork or not and who's an evil bastard oppressing
> the poor Austrian genius or not.

I didn't want to have it go that way. I was mainly pointing out that,
personal issues apart, FFmpeg has its technical merits that are
completely ignored by libav.

> I'm ok discussing technical merits and spend time fixing issues, not
> so much discussing stuff I'd rather not discuss such as if I'm an evil
> bastard for not working with somebody that joked about my death.

+1

Alexis.