[packman] Packman is becoming like a leaky boat full of patches.

[Dave Plater]

On 06/18/2011 05:06 PM, Manfred Tremmel wrote:
> libswscale.so.0 build from ffmpeg master and ffmpeg oldabi branches are
> no longer compatible. I don't have the time/knowledge to port all our
> programms to be compatible with the new abi, so we need to provide both
> abi version. To provide both libs I've created the subpackages
> libswscale0 out of the ffmpeg master branch package and
> libswscale_oldabi0.
> If you compile against a package which is build against ffmpeg-oldabi,
> you should add a "BuildRequires: libswscale_oldabi0" entry, otherwise
> use "BuildRequires: libswscale0".
>
There's something shared between ffmpeg and mjpegtools? The pkg-config file states "Cflags: -I${includedir} -I${includedir}/mpeg2enc 
-I${includedir}/mplex" but I can't seem to find the packages that mpeg2enc and mplex come from, maybe it's because I didn't have an 
uncrippled mjpegtools 1.9.0 handy.
  I see that there's two versions of libmp4v2 installed on my system. I think a cleanup of parallel installed libraries is needed in 
multimedia in general, a good start would be BuildRequire:ing the newest versions and having a serious look at why the old libs are still 
needed by "up to date packages?"
Especially ffmpeg I've seen new packages requiring specific older ffmpeg and bundling it, (can't remember the package name) if you then 
match that to system ffmpeg you'll find out why they bundled a particular version. If for example something like ffmpeg or mjpegtools had 
unmarked abi changes which caused bugs in programs that used them and these bugs were "fixed" in the calling program, I'm talking about 
something that has crept in long ago and possibly worsened with time. Possibly even because the major distributions don't apply the same 
standards to the grey area software as they do to internal stuff. I've never experienced the instability of multimedia software in any 
other catagories, even with beta releases of kde and bleeding edge samba.
Packman and Videolan need to synchronise ffmpeg naming to prevent parts of the vlc build getting mixed with the Packman build. Packages 
which only build with old libraries should be in an isolated repository with the old libraries and a bug filed upstream about the inability 
to run/build with newer libs.
There are multimedia audio packages that are trouble free and blender-2.57b uses or will be able to use once python3-3.2 is in factory (or 
I'm allowed to put a link in Packman), but video and related packages that use video libs are generally not so stable.

I'm busy replying to you in two emails, the other one relates specifically to mjpegtools which doesn't follow traditional library naming 
conventions. If I can find problems, there's a lot of people I can ask how to fix it but I have to be specific.

Over to finish the other mail.
Dave