[FFmpeg-devel] libraries linked with libX11 on GNU/kFreeBSD

[Diego Biurrun]

On Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 04:44:27PM +0200, Reinhard Tartler wrote:
> Diego Biurrun <diego at biurrun.de> writes:
> 
> >> Yes, I agree that this is a good idea to do in general.  However for
> >> this particular issue, this particular patch is pretty trivial and does
> >> affect only a very small number of machines. Here, it affects only
> >> gnu/kfreebsd machines.  For more complicated patches, I'd of course
> >> prefer to have it commented by some more experienced developer before
> >> publishing it anywhere.
> >
> > The patch seemed trivial, but it was still an ugly workaround for a
> > different issue.  I committed a proper fix in less than 24 hours.  How
> > much quicker do you want us to react?  Now you have to revert your patch
> > and backport mine - twice the work...
> 
> I have to admit that I'm really impressed by the reactiveness on your
> side. Really. Normally I'm working on my packages in debian in a batch
> processing way. It really seems that I have to reconsider my workflow
> now.. :-)

:)

Well, since you work on packaging, your patches mostly touch the build
system, which happens to have not one, but two active maintainers.
Therefore, reaction times are usually low.

> > Still I think you going down the wrong route.  Everybody's life will be
> > better if you pass patches through upstream directly.  Just cut out the
> > middlemen, save everybody time and improve the quality of your package
> > and upstream FFmpeg.
> 
> Well, in some sort, I am the middleman as package maintainer.  I'd
> expected experienced users to directly submit patches to ffmpeg-devel,
> but in general, bugs and patches are received at sumit at bugs.debian.org.
> These patches are almost never in a way that conform to the ffmpeg
> submission guidelines, so some additional work on them is needed, as
> I've learned from this thread.
> 
> Having this in mind, I'm not sure how to follow your suggestions.

If you notice a problem with FFmpeg and come up with a patch to fix it
or receive a patch for some problem, directly propose it here.  It will
get reviewed and applied or a different solution might be committed.
You can then backport this into your package if you feel the necessity.

This keeps the differences between upstream FFmpeg and Debian/Ubuntu
FFmpeg to a minimum and reduces the workload for everybody.  Also note
that this gives us extra testing if we apply something different from
what you proposed.  If it is a bit for a platform like HPPA that only
Debian builds, then it usually takes ages for us to get feedback.  You,
on the other hand, will notice problems right away and we can get the
issues resolved right away if you notify us.

Diego