[Mageia-dev] gstreamer packaging too split?

Wed Jul 6 15:21:19 CEST 2011

On 6 July 2011 14:40, Colin Guthrie <mageia at colin.guthr.ie> wrote:
+> 'Twas brillig, and Ahmad Samir at 05/07/11 10:50 did gyre and gimble:
+>>> I see packages like gstreamer0.10-soup installed as separate packages.
+>>> Is there any real gain from this split? Other than pulling in other
+>>> libraries etc, as it just causes potential problems for some packages
+>>> that do not require it. e.g. totem and rhythmbox both reqire the -soup
+>>> package but phonon-gstreamer does not (it should).
+>>>
+>>> But really, should this library just be bundled into the main -good
+>>> package?
+>>
+>> I agree about merging -soup, without it gst-based apps can't seem to
+>> play online streams, this is a basic functionality, I guess.
+>>
+>>>  Ditto for other "overly split" things, like the pulse plugin,
+>>> and the neon plugin in -bad....
+>>>
+>>
+>> I dunno about pulse, it would pull pulseaudio on users' systems (I
+>> know it's installed by default, but some do a minimal install and
+>> don't install pulse, even if the some of pulse libs are too dug deep
+>> down the whole stack :)).
+>
+> Hmmm, gstreamer0.10-pulse requires "pulseaudio >= 0.9.7". Interesting.
+>
+> I'm not sure why (it could easily be installed on a system that does not
+> have a PA daemon and operates as a thin client.
+>
+> Wonder if we should just drop that require and then the gst-pulse plugin
+> only really requires libpulse which a *lot* of other things need anyway,
+> and thus no additional stuff pulled in. WDYT?
+>
+
+Indeed; and draksound will install pulseaudio when configuring the
+system to use pulse.
+
+>
+>>> Has anyone sad down and thought about it a bit recently (here or in Mdv?)
+>>
+>> (I have to admit, I didn't sit down and think about it before). Here goes:
+>>
+>> ===========================
+>> -good:
+>> $ urpmf --sourcerpm gstreamer0.10-plugins-good | awk -F: '{print $1}'
+>> gstreamer0.10-caca
+>> gstreamer0.10-raw1394
+>> gstreamer0.10-soup
+>> gstreamer0.10-plugins-good
+>> gstreamer0.10-dv
+>> gstreamer0.10-wavpack
+>> gstreamer0.10-pulse
+>> gstreamer0.10-jack
+>> gstreamer0.10-speex
+>> gstreamer0.10-aalib
+>> gstreamer0.10-flac
+>>
+>> I think these can be merged in addition to -soup:
+>> -flac, an open format, expected to work o-o-t-b, IMHO
+>> -jack, doesn't matter really, it won't pull any more requires as
+>> libjack.so.0 is deep in the stack anyway (just tested with urpme
+>> --test and it wanted to yank 174 packages).
+>>
+>> As for the rest I am not sure, e.g. I've never used -wavpack, so I
+>> think they can remain split.
+>
+> Perhaps, but I'm just not convinced of the value of a split generally.
+
+Me neither (split only when there's something to gain).
+
+> Sure you could argue that pulling in an extra lib here and there can
+> count for a lot of disk space, but then we end up with various problems
+> for other packages (like the soup issue - although granted, one as
+> obvious as that will likely not crop up with the more subtle extras -
+> until some user plugs in their dv video camera...... :p)
+>
+>> =========================
+>> -ugly looks OK to me.
+>>
+>> $ urpmf --sourcerpm gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly | awk -F: '{print $1}'
+>> gstreamer0.10-sid
+>> gstreamer0.10-twolame
+>> gstreamer0.10-a52dec
+>> gstreamer0.10-cdio
+>> gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly
+>> gstreamer0.10-mpeg
+>>
+>>
+>> Though merging -a52dec looks like a good idea given how widely used
+>> the AC-3 codec is.
+>>
+>> ==========================
+>> I left the "bad" for last, they look OK too, each sub-package
+>> pulls/requires a different lib (e.g. rtmp -> librtmp.so.0), I guess
+>> that's a good splitting criteria; I've never used -neon so I'll take
+>> your word for it :)
+>> $ urpmf --sourcerpm gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad | awk -F: '{print $1}' |
+>> grep -v lib
+>> gstreamer0.10-rtmp
+>> gstreamer0.10-nas
+>> gstreamer0.10-rsvg
+>> gstreamer0.10-soundtouch
+>> gstreamer0.10-musepack
+>> gstreamer0.10-gsm
+>> gstreamer0.10-resindvd
+>> gstreamer0.10-kate
+>> gstreamer0.10-neon
+>> gstreamer0.10-voip
+>> gstreamer0.10-jp2k
+>> gstreamer0.10-ladspa
+>> gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-doc
+>> gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad
+>> gstreamer0.10-celt
+>> gstreamer0.10-schroedinger
+>> gstreamer0.10-mms
+>> gstreamer0.10-dc1394
+>> gstreamer0.10-directfb
+>> gstreamer0.10-dirac
+>> gstreamer0.10-ofa
+>> gstreamer0.10-wildmidi
+>> gstreamer0.10-gme
+>> gstreamer0.10-vdpau
+>> gstreamer0.10-mpeg2enc
+>> gstreamer0.10-vp8
+>> gstreamer0.10-cog
+>> gstreamer0.10-curl
+>>
+>>
+>> (A bit off-topic, I think -nas should be deprecated, NAS doesn't seem
+>> that used lately?).
+>
+> Yeah it is a bit of a grab-bag of stuff, but again, should we still just
+> bundle everything together anyway and sod the extra disk space needed?
+> It would be a lot simpler for users ("oh you need $foo? sure, just
+> installed -ugly/-bad") which is advise they can get direct from upstream
+> without having to know our particular packaging quirks.
+>
+> As someone who does upstream support for other projects, it's a pain to
+> put caveats in all your advice for distros you don't know.
+>
+> That said, the trade off may be too much, hence the canvassing of
+> opinions here :)
+>
+> Col
+>
+
+It would simplify things, for sure (though merging all those ones
+feels a bit queasy). Maybe we could experiment just to have some
+numbers, by installing all gst-{bad,ugly} in a clean chroot,
+respectively, and see how much more disk space that would eat (I could
+do that later on today or tomorrow).
+
+>
+>
+>
+>
+> --
+>
+> Colin Guthrie
+> mageia(at)colin.guthr.ie
+> http://colin.guthr.ie/
+>
+> Day Job:
+>  Tribalogic Limited [http://www.tribalogic.net/]
+> Open Source:
+>  Mageia Contributor [http://www.mageia.org/]
+>  PulseAudio Hacker [http://www.pulseaudio.org/]
+>  Trac Hacker [http://trac.edgewall.org/]
+>
+
+
+
+-- 
+Ahmad Samir
+