Bug#658084: libav-extra: Really necessary?

[Andres Mejia]

On Feb 1, 2012 10:03 AM, "Reinhard Tartler" <siretart at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 11:49 AM, Jonas Smedegaard <dr at jones.dk> wrote:
> > On 12-02-01 at 10:24am, Fabian Greffrath wrote:
> >> Am 31.01.2012 17:55, schrieb Reinhard Tartler:
> >> >Legally, I don't think there is much difference here. However, there
> >> >is a practical difference for Debian as distribution: we do not
> >> >violate the packages if users install a combination of packages that
> >> >result to a license clash. Yes, we can add conflicts, and probably
> >> >have to if we become aware of it, but we cannot be held responsible
> >> >for funky stuff that random users do on their (own) systems.
> >>
> >> Reminds me of the libcurl situation. We have both libcurl (linked
> >> against openssl) and libcurl-gnutls packages in Debian. The latter is
> >> for packages with licenses incompatible to openssl's one. However,
> >> nothing prevents you from installing the openssl-linked libcurl
> >> package on your system if you wish so.
>
> I didn't check the curl situation, but yes, that sounds a bit similar.
>
> > I believe multiple flavors of libcurl is installable concurrently, which
> > means dependent packages can link against a specific one as licensing
> > requires.
> >
> > With libav you provide no way for dependent packages to ensure their
> > licensing is respected.
> >
> >
> >> What parts of libav are actually affected by the two additional
> >> codecs? I guess it's only libavcodec (and maybe libavformat).
>
> Well, in detail, it affects two additional build dependencies, which
> are then detected at build time if present by debian/confflags. These
> enable the respective library wrappers.
>
> > If it
> >> really boils down to rebuild only one library with aditional
> >> confflags, I begin to like Andres' idea more and integrate libav-extra
> >> into the libav package.
> >
> > If ok legally then certainly that's most elegant.
>
> Sorry, I disagree with that approach. It a) increases the complexity
> of the packaging considerably,

I find it more complex and error prone to maintain two libav packages than
one.

> b) doubles the build-times

The current situation still does this, only it's worse. The buildd machines
have to perform the setup and cleanup twice for the two source packages on
top of building the two packages.

> and c)
> doesn't help at all with keeping the diff for ubuntu minimal.

Why is libav in ubuntu main anyway? Shouldn't it be in universe still,
particularly because most dependencies are in universe/multiverse?

How about if another name for the *-extra libs is used, like *-gpl3 for
example?

> --
> regards,
>     Reinhard
>
> _______________________________________________
> pkg-multimedia-maintainers mailing list
> pkg-multimedia-maintainers at lists.alioth.debian.org
>
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pkg-multimedia-maintainers

~ Andres
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-multimedia-maintainers/attachments/20120201/bbde965b/attachment.html>