Demoting ffmpeg and rdepends to multiverse

On Thu, Nov 03, 2005 at 02:01:46PM +0100, Sebastian Dröge wrote:

> Yes, I already noticed this with other packages by him. But in the case
> of ffmpeg it should be fine, the only thing I don't trust him is for
> incompatible API versions but I'll verify if the API changed with every
> new version.

Nnnngh. No. Check if the *ABI* changed with every new version. If it has 
done, bump the SONAME, upload a new package with a different binary name 
and then modify every package that uses it to build-depend on the new 
binary package. 

> Yes rebuilding is needed in all depending packages when updating ffmpeg.
> But when using shared libraries (with shlibs (>= currentversion) (<<
> newversion)) breakages will show up imediatly as everything needs a
> rebuild to be installable. This way broken packages must be handled
> early and can't be deferred like now which will yield to unbuildable
> packages in releases.

But then you're forcing rebuilds *even when they're not necessary*. 
Incompatible ABI changes *must* result in a SONAME bump, and the normal 
way of handling that in Debian is to change the binary package name in 
order to allow multiple versions to be co-installable. This is, 
obviously, mad when upstream keep changing their ABI.

Now, what would be helpful is a clear and concise list of which parts of 
ffmpeg are free and which are awkwardly patent encumbered, and whether 
it's practical to split the two of them out.
-- 
Matthew Garrett | mjg59 at srcf.ucam.org