[FFmpeg-devel] [libav-devel] [PATCH 0/20] removal of deprecated features

[Reimar Döffinger]

On 31.07.2015, at 17:22, Hendrik Leppkes <h.leppkes at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 31, 2015 at 5:12 PM, compn <tempn at mi.rr.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, 30 Jul 2015 17:05:12 +0200
>> Andreas Cadhalpun <andreas.cadhalpun at googlemail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> Hi,
>>> 
>>> On 28.07.2015 15:36, Vittorio Giovara wrote:
>>>> This set contains the removal of all deprecated features marked as
>>>> such until 2012/early 2013. This was announced several times in the
>>>> past months and agreed at several meetings (since fosdem and
>>>> recently at the sprint).
>>>> 
>>>> With more than two year span, downstream users should have had
>>>> enough time to update their API usage (or comment otherwise).
>>> 
>>> Unfortunately this is just wishful thinking.
>>> As it is, your proposed removal of deprecated features is going to
>>> break about three quarters of all packages using the libav* libraries
>>> in Debian:
>> 
>> i am against removing this api in ffmpeg, if my vote counts for
>> anything.
>> 
>> anyway to keep the old api and have the new api at the same time?
>> yes, this means letting the old api rot, i have no problem with this.
>> just to give time for projects to update. or maybe even create a
>> wrapper ? bah.
>> 
> 
> They have had 2-3 years to update, what makes you think they will ever
> if we don't force them at some point?

While there is some truth to it, 2-3 years means you still have to used ifdefs
if you want to support older (but not quite ancient) distros.
For the features the only one or 2 programs use, contacting them might be an option.
We could even think of whether we can reliably write a sed or awk script that replaces things, then distros could either apply that as an extra step or projects use it to create patches...
Just throwing out ideas...