Select provider of libav* libraries

[Felipe Sateler]

On Wed, Aug 27, 2014 at 10:43 AM, Reinhard Tartler <siretart at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Aug 27, 2014 10:28 AM, "Felipe Sateler" <fsateler at debian.org> wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 6:47 PM, Reinhard Tartler <siretart at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > On Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 6:36 PM, Benjamin Drung <bdrung at debian.org>
>> > wrote:
>> >> Hi,
>> >>
>> >> there was a discussion on the debian-devel mailing list about
>> >> reintroducing FFmpeg to Debian [1]. The security team made clear [2]
>> >> that they will only support one provider of the libav* libraries. So
>> >> either libav or FFmpeg could go in the release and the other library
>> >> has
>> >> to stay in experimental (or unstable with a RC bug). The maintainer of
>> >> libav is the Debian Multimedia team and therefore it is up to us to
>> >> decide whether we want libav or FFmpeg in Debian 8 (jessie).
>> >>
>> >> So I am asking you: Should we ship libav or FFmpeg?
>> >
>> > Libav, see my previous emails that I posted on this mailing list on
>> > this topic for rationale.
>>
>> What I've found missing in the recent discussion is the approach to
>> releases, which was a factor back in the day. If I recall correctly,
>> libav has a release process and a merge policy that was better for a
>> stable distro. I'm fuzzy on the details, though. Is this difference
>> still so?
>
> Well,  I still act as upstream release manager and do spend most of my time
> with making sure that all upstream release fit into the Debian release
> cycle. For instance I've strongly pushed for the recent libav11 beta so that
> we can start the transition in time.  I also am in charge for the the stable
> point releases including the uploads to stable-security in the last three
> years or so. In that context, I'm making sure that point releases only
> contain code changes that are acceptable for stable-security.

That is excellent news, and I'm not sure the wider audience knows
this. For comparison, do you know how the ffmpeg release process
works?


-- 

Saludos,
Felipe Sateler