Bug#702762: "More or less" dead upstream

[Reinhard Tartler]

On Sat, Jan 11, 2014 at 1:27 PM, Bálint Réczey <balint at balintreczey.hu> wrote:
> I think filing bugs is the best way of
> starting the removal of libpostproc. There are only a few packages
> depending on it,
> thus adding a linitian warning may be overkill:
> $ apt-cache rdepends libpostproc52
> libpostproc52
> Reverse Depends:
>   libxine2-ffmpeg
>   libxine1-ffmpeg
>   xbmc-bin
>   vlc-nox
>   transcode
>   mpv
>   mplayer2
>   mplayer-gui
>   mplayer
>   mencoder
>   libpostproc-dev
>   gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg
>   libgmerlin-avdec1
>   ffmpeg2theora
>
> Regarding the migration libpostproc is missing only from stable, it is present
> in testing thus every package using it can still migrate and I think it is OK.

I think there may be a misunderstanding here, libpostproc *is* in
stable, but as part of the libav package. It was phased out after the
0.5 release, and I packaged it as standalone. I've packaged it as
standalone source package because of the longish list of packages that
use it.

The list of packages you quote above still seems rather long, and many
of those packages seem very undermaintained to me. Pushing them to
drop libpostproc may be the right thing to do, but please be aware
that this may take years. That's why I think a lintian warning may of
help here.

>> I did not push very hard on this issue because I wanted to see if
>> there would be any upstream activity and it would make sense to keep
>> libpostproc anyways. It turns out that the upstream repository
>> http://git.videolan.org/?p=libpostproc.git  didn't see real functional
>> development that aren't build fixes for years. Moreover, nobody
>> stepped up to take over the package. Now 1.5y later, it may be a good
>> time to phase libpostproc out of debian for good.
> I think we should discuss the mass bug filing on debian-devel in advance,
> but otherwise I'm OK with the removal. Would you like to announce the
> removal?

I'm a bit uncomfortable with discussing that on debian-devel TBH, as I
don't see any chance we can remove libpostproc anytime soon. The
current libpostproc package is in testing and is supposely working
fine. Porting package to libavfilter is going to require upstream
involvement, which is looking at the list of affected upstreams not
going to happen soon. I'm really unsure what's the best way to proceed
from here.

> I will migrate XBMC to libavfilter when I can find some time for that.

If XBMC needs a deinterlacing fitler, I believe that vf_yadif is one
of the best fitlers around for this task. I'd say this should be done
regardless what's happening with libpostproc.

-- 
regards,
    Reinhard