Bug#755154: vlc cache gen should happen at runtime, not buildtime

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Le 2014-08-22 11:24, Harald Sitter a écrit :
> On Fri, Aug 22, 2014 at 9:38 AM, Rémi Denis-Courmont 
> <remi at remlab.net> wrote:
>> Le 2014-08-22 10:31, Harald Sitter a écrit :
>>
>>> All that being said perhaps the more interesting bit is why exactly
>>> VLC thinks the cache is invalid to begin with. In particular
>>> considering we only have one build that builds with all plugins we
>>> have packaged and there are no third party plugins in any package
>>> anywhere ever. So the cache should always have a superset of what 
>>> is
>>> available on a system.
>>
>>
>> Changed file name, file size, or file modification time.
>
> But how could either of those happen if the only supplier of plugins
> are the VLC packages and so all of the cases you mentioned should be
> reflected in a new cache file provided by a new version of vlc-nox?

You tell me; I have never reproduced the alleged crash.

> Or more to the point... how could a completely new installation with 
> a
> matching version of vlc-nox and vlc end up thinking the cache is
> invalid?

It can't, unless something mucks with the modification time or some 
data corruption happens.

> I think installation aborting if the cache generation actually 
> doesn't
> work because of ABI breakage or whatever in an underlying library
> seems like a very appropriate course of action given that all libvlc
> applications would potentially end up broken at that point. It's not
> the libvlc applications that are broken, so willingly letting them
> crash rather than making sure we end up with a working set of plugins
> + cache seems ill-advised at best. Alas, this can be argued back and
> forth, it sounds like a less than optimal situation to begin with.

For a dedicated installer, I would agree that failing to install 
straight up is better than failing to run later.

But we are talking about the Debian packaging system here. Failing to 
install means screwing up the whole oeprating system.

-- 
Rémi Denis-Courmont