Select provider of libav* libraries

[Andreas Cadhalpun]

Hi Alessio,

On 09.05.2015 11:19, Alessio Treglia wrote:
> Admittedly seems there is more activity on FFmpeg's than libav's side.
> It does not necessarily reflect into higher quality though - plus,

But it certainly means that FFmpeg has more features.

> libav is not dead at all as they're still releasing new versions and
> providing support and fixes for a number of stable branches.

I wouldn't mind having both, you just need to convince the security team.

> I'm personally getting very well with libav and apparently it is
> enough to meet all my needs too. Nevertheless others are encountering
> issues that they claim are solved with FFmpeg, so that might be a
> solution which could make many users happy.

I'd say you are quite lucky if you haven't come across a Libav bug that's
fixed in FFmpeg. Anyway, you should be able to use FFmpeg just as successfully.

> I'm not going to vote on this now as I really need to hear an opinion
> from the libav's current maintainer, Reinhard Tartler.

The last uploads were done by Sebastian Ramacher, so I think he's currently
the Debian Libav maintainer. Therefore I'd welcome his position on this topic.

> I genuinely believe that we all need to hear an opinion from him
> before taking any further action.

Reinhard expressed his opinions during the last round of discussion [1][2],
I countered all his arguments in follow-up mails [3][4]. He didn't reply.
(Fun fact: Reinhard wrote:
"For instance, there are a number of developers that actively
contribute to both projects and are essential in keeping both projects
in good health."
I'm now one of those.)

But since there seems to be a clear consensus in favor of switching to
FFmpeg in Debian and no additional arguments are presented, I doubt that
waiting far longer before starting the transition would make much sense.

Best regards,
Andreas


1: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2014/08/msg00160.html
2: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2014/08/msg00269.html
3: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2014/08/msg00200.html
4: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2014/08/msg00285.html