Audacity Package for Ubuntu / Debian

[Andres Mejia]

On Thursday 11 June 2009 13:56:58 Benjamin Drung wrote:
> Am Donnerstag, den 11.06.2009, 11:27 +0200 schrieb Reinhard Tartler:
> > [ fullquote to maintain context for pkg-multimedia, which are CC'ed ]
> >
> > Fred Drueck <fdruec1 at uic.edu> writes:
> > > Hello all,
> > >
> > > I'm not sure of the excepted etiquette or forum for my request, because
> > > I have never wanted to make one like it before, so I'm e-mailing the
> > > package maintainers, I figure they are listed by aptitude for a reason,
> > > my apologies if I'm offending anyone and/or being a pest and thanks for
> > > the work you've done in providing pre-compiled software that I have
> > > used.
> > >
> > > As you are probably aware, Ubuntu ships version 1.3.7 of Audacity in
> > > the 9.04 release, according the audacity website, this is a "beta
> > > version", there is also a "stable version", currently 1.2.6.  I have
> > > experienced a number of bugs with the "beta" version provided in
> > > Ubuntu, it's possible that these are system-specific bugs present in
> > > the linux port of the 1.2.x series, but these are definitely bugs I do
> > > not encounter using the stable version of Audacity in Windows, while I
> > > have experienced a number of similar bugs trying to use a previous
> > > 1.3.x version of Audacity in Windows.  Another problem I have i that
> > > project files can be imported from Audacity 1.2.x into the 1.3.x
> > > branch, but not vice-versa, and I don't want to have to use the
> > > un-stable, buggy beta software in Windows as well.  (there are work
> > > arounds that I can use to get my date back into 1.2.6, by exporting
> > > individual audio tracks to .WAV and then re-importing them one at time,
> > > but I would rather not have to do that).
> > >
> > > Anyways, my opinion is that ubuntu should provide the "stable" 1.2.x
> > > series of packages from the audacity team as the default option;
> > > perhaps offering the "beta" 1.3.x series as well.  (Although I've been
> > > having a hell of time trying to build a functional 1.2.6 audacity
> > > package, so maybe that's why it's not in the repos)
> >
> > regarding audacity, ubuntu follows the development in debian closely.
> > I'm copying the maintainers mailing list for further input.
> >
> > pkg-multimedia, what do you think? shall we revert to the 1.2 series in
> > unstable and keep 1.3 in experimental?
>
> No, I think we should stick to 1.3 and help upstream to fix all
> remaining bugs. Upstream is getting close to release the stable series
> 1.4. Maybe there will be a 1.3.7 before.
>
> For people, who wants the older 1.2.x release, someone can provide these
> packages in a PPA.

We should instead provide both packages at once, one for the stable version, and 
one for the beta, and either make use of /etc/alternatives, or have the two 
packages Conflict with each other.

It would be nice to have the stable packages backported to Lenny as well.

-- 
Regards,
Andres