Bug#272259: Any progress on H.323 issues?

[Andre Beck]

Hi,

I don't want to sound ranting, but this bug is now open for more than
100 days. It is also obviously a duplicate with at least #275280. I'm
interested into knowing if there is any progress on this issues in the
packaged version or if I should give up on the package altogether and
follow the README of the chan_h323 source which states "stay away from
any distribution stuff and build this code yourself" (in its own words).
I had hopes that this isn't the case with Debian, but having an
essentially unusable H.323 backend in the testing and unstable trains
for *months* now is going to break my faith (slowly).

The package currently in testing links chan_h323 against

  libpt.so.1.6.6 => /usr/lib/libpt.so.1.6.6 (0xb7cf1000)
  libopenh323.so.1.13.5 => /usr/lib/libopenh323.so.1.13.5 (0xb7381000)

while the source README clearly states

 This code runs on Open H.323 v1.12.2 and PWLib v1.5.2. If you use different 
 versions, you are on your own.

with some additional bashing towards distribution specific versions. The
reason for most of the problems seems to be that that baroque monster
OpenH323 is fooling around with a sound device when not asked to, always
leading to debug logs like

  0:27.231 H245:782298	      h323ep.cxx(1967)	Codec	Could not 
open sound channel "/dev/dsp" for playing: No such device
  0:27.229 H245:782298	    channels.cxx(1102)	LogChan	Receive 
thread aborted (open fail) for G.711-uLaw-64k{sw} <3>

(taken from some random bug report). Of course you are not responsible
for the baroqueness of OpenH323, the inability of the Asterisk people
to really *fix* compatibility with OpenH323 instead of falling back
to force the use of outdated versions of that code. But what can be
done to get a working package into testing (the soon to come stable)?

I've seen you are splitting the H.323 stuff away from the asterisk
main package in unstable, are there other H.323 fixes in this train?
Would it help to build chan_h323 statically linked against the
correct versions of OpenH323 and PT, if at all possible? Or may 1.0.3
finally bring a solution?

TIA,
Andre.
-- 
                  The _S_anta _C_laus _O_peration
  or "how to turn a complete illusion into a neverending money source"

-> Andre Beck    +++ ABP-RIPE +++    IBH Prof. Dr. Horn GmbH, Dresden <-