[gst-devel] GStreamer status, 20 Sept 2005

[Thomas Vander Stichele]

Hi Bastien,


> You can still install newer versions of Totem on FC4. The 1.0 branch
> won't require any additional dependencies

... which is the branch that is not receiving that much bug fixing wrt.
GStreamer, right ? AFAIK you're not working on anything
GStreamer-related for Totem.

> , the 1.2 branch will require
> iso-codes (for the menu language, RPMs available), and a newer D-Bus
> (for the Mozilla plugin, rebuild the current rawhide D-Bus RPMs and
> there you go).

... right, which is something a user typically won't do and which RedHat
won't provide as an update to FC4.


> And I never reply that a particular bug has been fixed in the unstable
> version unless it would be impossible to backport the fixes to the
> stable version. Ancient versions (prior to 1.0), with backtraces with no
> debugging symbols will get that treatment.

I'm particularly talking about the past up to now, and the GStreamer
backend.  I don't know if you have done much work on the
GStreamer-specific bits in the past; I'm mostly talking about the things
Ronald has worked on.

> > b) the Totem that is currently being developed only ever gets tested by
> > a handful of developers and some brave jhbuild souls.  This totem indeed
> > has bug fixes, but also new features, and can only be run by people who
> > take very great effort into building latest CVS of everything.  It is
> > impossible to package this new version of totem for wider testing by
> > users that would love to provide bug reports about any feature you're
> > currently working on *when* you're working on it.
> 
> Impossible to package for what? For FC3? Yeah, it's hard to package for
> FC3, but the switch to GTK+ 2.6 was necessary to take advantage of new
> features available to us.

This comment is based on my past experience.  When FC4 wasn't out yet,
the bug fixes going in for the GStreamer back-end were not possible to
package for FC3 (which then was the lastest stable release), and only
after specifically having Ronald work on a backport of some of those
fixes for Totem was I able to ship an rpm for it that did solve *a lot*
of user complaints.

You've told me that in the future this will be less of a problem, and
I'm looking forward to that being the case.  I was using my past
experience with Totem as an example for why it's not a good idea to
always rely on the latest and greatest; I might be wrong, but nothing
you've said here contradicts that.

> Saying that you require CVS version of everything is a load of BS.

Again, was talking about my specific experience in the six months Ronald
was working for us with Totem being one of his specific assignments.  In
that period between FC3 and FC4, and until Ronald made a specific
backport patch, the only way anyone here was able to run the version of
Totem that Ronald was doing GStreamer fixes on was one built from
jhbuild, with a whole set of deps from CVS.

>  And
> so you know, I'll probably be pushing the HEAD branch of Totem to use
> GTK+ 2.8 when FC5 is out. The 1.0 and 1.2 branches will still work fine
> on older distros.

Sounds very sensible.  You're pretty much making the same point as me -
it makes sense to have your requirements be "stuff shipped by latest
stable versions of major distros".  Unless I'm misunderstanding you ?

Thomas

> 
> ---
> Bastien Nocera <hadess at hadess.net> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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