[FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] The Big Bump checklist

[Reinhard Tartler]

On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 16:39:53 (CET), Uoti Urpala wrote:

> On Tue, 2011-02-22 at 14:58 +0100, Diego Elio Petten? wrote:
>> Il giorno mar, 22/02/2011 alle 14.41 +0100, Stefano Sabatini ha scritto:
>> > Releasing and dropping the deprecated API just afterhand, and give
>> > another year for application developers to catch up with the new API
>> > seems a much better plan to me, especially considering how disruptive
>> > the bump will be given the delay from the previous one. 
>> 
>> Wait, I'm talking about bumping ABI, not API. You can keep the old API
>> as deprecated by using inline wrappers, but mapping to the new ABI.
>> 
>> This way you still have source compatibility between the old and new
>> FFmpeg, but also a binary compatibility between 0.7 and git master. And
>> you drop the huge overhead currently present in the FFmpeg libraries on
>> shared linking.
>
> IMO this is what should be done, but at the moment various features are
> scheduled to be dropped at the next major version bump. For some of the
> scheduled drops (SampleFormat for example) the new API has only been
> added recently. I think that should be changed and the deprecated API
> should be kept for some time after the bump.
>
> I mean a timeline something like this:
>      1. major bump in FFmpeg followed by release; old API kept where
>         possible
>      2. distros begin switching, but there will be a transition period
>         where both versions are in use; applications can keep using old
>         API to compile against either version without too many
>         complications
>      3. after giving distros a month or two to make the new FFmpeg
>         available the deprecated APIs are dropped

As we expect distros to use releases, we cannot really talk in 'months'
but only about FFmpeg releases. I think one release should be enough to
adapt. Moreover, I'm open to discuss how often we want to release. For
instance, I understand from gstreamer that they would rather prefer two
releases a year over one.

Regarding how much time it takes to do such a transition properly,
please have a look at this to get an impression what work is involved
here: http://release.debian.org/transitions/ffmpeg.html

>      4. all applications switch to using the new API only, dropping
>         compatibility with pre-bump FFmpeg versions
>

-- 
Gruesse/greetings,
Reinhard Tartler, KeyID 945348A4