Default Music Player in Ubuntu 12.04

[Jani Monoses]

Hi,

> - issue with ARM arch: I do not understand that point because Xamarin
> business model is based on mobile and work with ARM and we have no bug
> open for that. I know that some people used it and do not encounter any
> issues.

These points likely explain why we had issues while others did not:

* We are using a different toolchain than other distros (Linaro-GCC with 
many optimizations and possibly regressions).

* Debian had not seen the bugs because they built Mono for ARMv5 not ARMv7.

* Android and iOS: While the main bugs may be in Mono, if they only 
manifest in Banshee or worse in Banshee+SMP for some reason than Android 
and iOS testing is unlikely to have hit them.

* Mono upstream ARM auto-testboxes were running Ubuntu were 9.04 IIRC 
which still targeted ARMv5 and they had obviously not encountered our 
issues. Had they used a more recent one, it is likely that the bugs 
would have been investigated by them too.

* At least for 11.04 we were 2 stable releases behind upstream, which 
had tons of SMP issues fixed, because the Debian/Ubuntu/Mono packaging
and stabilization of 2.10 only landed after 11.04

Debugging Mono apps requires good knowledge of the Mono runtime and 
APIs, so our C/C++/gdb experience is not necessarily translatable 
without considerable effort. While Mono undoubtedly offers productivity 
gains at development time, parts of it are paid back when debugging, 
given that most developers are not familiar with it.(This is true to a 
certain degree for all other non C/python/GObject projects too, but I 
think it is the most visible for Mono among all the desktop building 
technologies shipped on a modern desktop)

So just as the other ARM team members before I can confirm that Mono via 
Banshee was the toughest package to debug and try keep working in the 
past to cycles. For 11.10 we failed, not having caught the showstopper 
bug early enough.

Jani