Bug#656848: libav-dev package?

[Reinhard Tartler]

On Mi, Jan 25, 2012 at 13:15:31 (CET), Harald Dunkel wrote:

> On 01/23/12 07:22, Reinhard Tartler wrote:
>>
>> I don't think this would be a great idea. As application maintainer,
>> you should know the requirements of your package, and knowing the
>> libraries it uses is one part of them.
>>
>
> Not necessarily. If I debianize a huge package I have to know
> that it needs ffmpeg or libav at build time, but in which
> packages the libav development stuff is split into is not
> important.

Well, that's the point where I disagree. That's important for us to know
as libav maintainers.

BTW, ffmpeg is the name of the deprecated command line tool. Libav is
the project name. 

> The next libav update might provide a different set
> of packages, anyway.

That would be insane. If something like this happens, I'd file bugs
explaining the situation. Luckily, there are (at least currently) no
such plans.

Sidenote: I managed to prevent the introduction of libavcore, which got
reverted before the 0.7 release. Since then, FFmpeg introduced
libswrescale, which does not exist in Libav.


> Surely the meta package would be something optional. A shortcut
> to make writing control files easier, esp. if you have to look
> at the libav version number.
>
>> To be more specific, during my last archive rebuilds, the exact build
>> dependencies gave me a clue what part of libav a package is using,
>> which was helpful for classifying libav's reverse dependencies. This
>> wouldn't be possible at all if all application packages started to
>> build-depend on some libav-dev package.
>>
>
> I surely don't know the details of your analysis, but since you
> can rebuild libav only as a unit I would have assumed that you
> had to rebuild all packages that depend upon _any_ libav dev
> package.

Well, take libpostproc as an example. There are currently plans to split
libpostproc out to a seperate package, which is likely happen for Libav 0.9


Cheers,
Reinhard.

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