[grsch-devbug at ran-dom.org: asterisk-dahdi: MeetMe app should be reincluded]

[Gregor Schaffrath]

Hi Tzafrir,

thank you for your swift response.

Indeed, I distinctly remember the pain of recompiling the zaptel module over and over again ;)

I appreciate the rationale of core developers to try and move away, but I'd put forward two arguments in favor of including MeetMe:
a) The decision of extending support for MeetMe is based on the circumstance that removing it breaks non-deprecated (if somewhat exotic) functions (namely SLA).
b) Last time I checked ConfBridge (admittedly a while ago, but afaik this hasn't changed because part of it probably is a design decision), MeetMe held a couple of distinctive advantages for small setups: It abstracted some tedious things, like setting up a database for PINs and managing them in the dialplan, or like doing dialplan magic to enable some users creating conferences while others could merely join running ones (it's a simple argument in the MeetMe call whether a non-existing conference should be spawned under the given extension or not)

Of course this will only concern a limited number of users - and they could simply apt-get the source and compile * by hand... but then again, the same holds for basically all features ;) (And the latter one might be actually useful for novice users who are not too tech-savvy, I'd guess).

I personally will continue to use MeetMe, as long as it's supported both for ease of use w.r.t. (b) and - to be entirely honest - because it allows me to keep my precious dialplan I built with loving hands so long ago... (using asterisk since ~2002 and already been cursing over occasional dialplan syntax shifts in the past ;) ). So when I move to 13, I'll certainly use MeetMe (don't know if that counts as a risen hand ;) )

I was unaware of the shift away from chan_sip - crossing my fingers they don't switch from monolithic-block-trouble to API management trouble :)


Cheers,
	Gregor.



On Tue, Dec 19, 2017 at 11:04:31AM +0100, Tzafrir Cohen wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> This is essentially a valid bug report, though it got some details
> wrong:
> 
> On Tue, Dec 19, 2017 at 01:27:18AM +0100, Gregor Schaffrath wrote:
> > Hi all!
> > 
> > Formally, this is a Devuan bug, but I gather it's inherited from the Debian package list, so it may be of interest to you.
> 
> I do hope that the packaging is shared as much as possible. If there are
> any other fixes needed in the Asterisk package, I'd appreciate to have
> them.
> 
> > 
> > Bottom line: Upstream flagged an *-app (MeetMe) as 'deprecated' and _reinstated_ the app subsequently in an upstream bugtracker discussion I guess the Debian maintainer did not read anymore (as he figured the app was 'deprecated').
> > 
> > Therefore, the app, which is alive 'n kickin' (Status: 'extended support' and under active development) got excluded from Debian repositories and all distributions which derive their packages from Debian.
> > 
> > Devuan bug link: http://bugs.devuan.org//cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=170
> > 
> > Cheers,
> > 		Gregor.
> > 
> > ----- Forwarded message from Gregor Schaffrath <grsch-devbug at ran-dom.org> -----
> > 
> > Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2017 23:57:02 +0100
> > From: Gregor Schaffrath <grsch-devbug at ran-dom.org>
> > To: submit at bugs.devuan.org
> > Cc: grsch-devbug at ran-dom.org
> > Subject: asterisk-dahdi: MeetMe app should be reincluded
> > User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15)
> > 
> > Package: asterisk-dahdi
> > Version: 1:11.13.1~dfsg-2+deb8u4
> > Severity: important
> > 
> > Dear Maintainer,
> > 
> > I noticed that app_meetme.so , originally part of the asterisk package first got shifted to asterisk-dahdi and subsequently omitted, as the (very old, very basic) app got a 'deprecated' status from upstream in asterisk-10.
> > (compare: https://launchpad.net/debian/+source/asterisk/+changelog)
> > 
> > However, the asterisk community figured that ommission of the app broke functionality of non-deprecated asterisk parts and reinstated the app as 'extended support'.
> > (compare: https://issues.asterisk.org/jira/browse/ASTERISK-20134)
> > 
> > The app itself is alive and being actively modified.
> > (compare: https://wiki.asterisk.org/wiki/display/AST/Upgrading+to+Asterisk+11 )
> > 
> 
> It got shifted to package asterisk-dahdi as meetme depends on DAHDI
> kernel-level support to work properly. DAHDI is an out-of-tree kernel
> module (sadly. I'd really like for it to be pushed into the tree. I
> don't see that happening any time soon). Originally it was a major
> dependency of Asterisk (as a good timing source, as well as for Meetme,
> where the mixing is done in the kernel). Eventually Asterisk grew more
> standard replaccements for both of those. Thus it made sense to move all
> of the DAHDI functionality to a sub-package to avoid pulling the DAHDI
> packages for every installation of Asterisk.
> 
> egardless of that, app_meetme is considered deprecated by the core
> Asterisk developers team. Specifically:
> * It is in "extended support" status. That is: it is not a focus of
>   development. They don't touch it if they don't have to (so is chan_sip
>   in Asterisk >= 13, BTW).
> * Its build is disabled by default. Not only does it depend on
>   build-time "dahdi" dependencies, it also has to be enabled explicitly.
>   This is a strong hint that the module is not appreciated.
> 
> That said: nothing wrong with re-enabling it (as long as it is in the
> asterisk-dahdi binary package. Otherwise it won't work because of
> missing DAHDI dependencies). In fact, the source package includes a
> patch to re-enable it (called "reenable"). I'm not sure exactly why it
> was not applied.
> 
> However, app_confbridge has improved since version 11 that you use. So
> if there's anybody who uses Asterisk >= 13 and uses meetme, please
> speak up and meetme will be re-enabled.
> 
> -- 
> Tzafrir Cohen         | tzafrir at jabber.org | VIM is
> http://tzafrir.org.il |                    | a Mutt's
> tzafrir at cohens.org.il |                    |  best
> tzafrir at debian.org    |                    | friend