New speex packages, last call for pre-release testing

[Matthew Craig]

Hello Ron,

Thank you for your Herculean effort getting your arms around the Speex
library issues and pushing forward to make it a stable interface
within Debian.

Regarding Mumble, I have some insight into the application and the
lead developer's interoperability with Speex.  For what it's worth, as
the most junior member of the team, I wanted to give my thoughts on
Mumble.

Mumble currently embeds Speex libraries, as it uses the most advanced
features.  This is understandibily not acceptable within Debian
repositories.  The lead developer of Mumble is currently working very
closely with Jean Michael from Speex to incorporate all those
requirements into the future 1.2 beta3 release of Speex.

Because Mumble has not yet divorsed itself from the internal Speex
libraries and will be undergoing changes as it does so, it is my
belief that this software should not be adopted to Debian repositories
within a short timeframe.  While the software is mature in a
stand-alone sense, it will be much more ready for Linux distributions
after working out the Speex library issues and also it will be "case
hardened" (to use a metal forging term) by the Ubuntu community over
the next 8 months, as it premiers in the upcoming Ubuntu Hardy
software repository.

Postponing Mumble's adoption is a hard thing for me to support,
because I am very excited to see Mumble get adopted in all
distributions, but it makes no sense for this team to wedge a software
package in place that requires unreleased features of Speex, just at
the same time the Speex library itself is undergoing changes, which
ABI already effect tens of other existing VoIP applications.  Even if
this means Mumble will not be in Debian for another 2 years, at least
then the Speex environment will be more friendly to Mumble's
requirements.  And, so, I do say postpone adoption of the Mumble
application, in order to iron out the Speex requirements.


Matthew Craig





On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 8:59 PM, Ron <ron at debian.org> wrote:
>
>  Hi,
>
>  I've put some draft source packages for the next upload here:
>  http://people.debian.org/~ron/speex/
>
>  If you have an interest in helping to make this painless, please take a
>  look at them, and let us know a) what I've missed, b) what they break,
>  c) what you think we need to do about it.
>
>  Currently I see we have 3 main issues remaining before they can be
>  pushed into Sid...
>
>   - Which packages do they need to conflict with as a result of the
>    library split?
>
>   - What to do about mumble?
>
>   - How to keep the release team from wanting to kill me.
>
>
>  If you are responsible for a package depending on speex, please test
>  it and let us know whether it will transition to this version ok, or
>  if it will need to be rebuilt (in which case we'll need to conflict
>  with the current version of your package in Sid).
>
>  If you know someone who is, but is not reading this, please pass the
>  word along ...
>
>  Lastly, please avoid pushing these prematurely into other public
>  repositories -- it is almost certain there will be a few more changes
>  before this version is actually released, and I'll have enough to
>  worry about keeping my scalp intact without that sort of trouble ...
>
>  Cheers,
>  Ron
>
>
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