Re: GStreamer releases

["Ronald S. Bultje" <rbultje ronald bitfreak net>]

On Mon, 2005-08-29 at 15:15 -0400, Luis Villa wrote:
> > - a lot of the DVD work Ronald has done was done after 0.8.10.  DVD
> > support is mentioned in the release notes (I personally have my doubts
> > if this should be advertised *at all*, given that in my opinion we
> > shouldn't be promoting patented stuff), and I feel it would be
> > misleading to state GNOME 2.12 has good DVD support without this release
> > being part of it.
> 
> I can nuke that from the release notes if it isn't accurate.
[..]
> You know this code base better than we do. :/ You guys are running
> some automated tests at this point, right? I assume the branch is
> passing them? Ronald, what are your thoughts?

(if you don't want to see why I think what I think, just skip to the
end.)

...

Hard... So first off, a lot of our *developer* attention has been spent
on getting 0.9 ready. On the other hand, we have the *user* testing (the
guys running cvs-builds etc.), who *do* actually test (0.8) CVS. I
really don't know how wide this testing really is, I lack a good view of
it. It could just be 10 people running their CVS version for 10 minutes
every last day of the month, or maybe it's hundreds of people running it
as default desktop. Who knows? I lack this information, so I can't give
any statistics or anything, just guess.
So fact: I've received one bug report related to the DVD menus /
subtitles (from Jan), we pinpointed the problem, it's not fixed, but I
don't think it'll happen for many DVDs (not any I own). I received
several success stories, so it appears to work.

So here's my first guess: if we draw back 0.8.11 from 2.12, people will
be really pissed off at us (or maybe me) because I've blatantly lied
about all this cool DVD features that were gonna be in 2.12, "and look,
still no menus! You suck! Boo!" Drawing back features really isn't just
something you do in a snap, it has to be a last resort decision, like an
emergency break.

So as for the lack of testing, the good thing is that there haven't been
all that many changes in the code after the latest 0.8.10 releases. Most
changes specifically touch DVD playback, and don't affect anything else.
That's good. This is especially true for GStreamer core. I'm pretty sure
we can do a blind new release there, I'm pretty nothing will break.
Plugins are harder, because there's so many of 'em. So from the
ChangeLog, here's my suggestion:
* ximagesrc needs some testing (Zaheer explicitely asked for this)
* I'm pretty sure text subtitles still work fine, but the DVD work
actually touched some of the text-subtitle support code also, so some
basic tests here would be fine. I know some of our CVS build testers use
this feature a lot, but just to make my heart feel comfi. I'm confident
this won't be a problem.
* so how good is our DVD support, really? I received several "thank you"
success stories via private email, one bug report (with explanation,
fixeable) from Jan (thaytan), and well, is this really so good? I don't
know. Should we label it experimental? I think it works in pretty much
all cases, but I may turn out to be so horribly wrong when it's too
late.I'm currently confident enough to say that it's "probably OK", but
I want to step back a bit there; we should really really really be
prepared to do a very quick 0.8.12 of -plugins when we find some serious
bug in the DVD reading code, and release that for gnome 2.12.1 and for
distributions (which usually lag a bit with the gnome release schedule).
I know Fedora doesn't care shit about "this patented thingy", but
several others do. Let's not kid ourselves. Everyone buys DVDs. This
feature is tremendously important.

...

So, short, yes, it should go in 2.12; we should be prepared for a new
gst-plugins release when that turns out to be necessary (for 2.12.1 /
distros / etc.), because there's some new features in there and from
experience we know that this may break. However, we shouldn't be scared.
Let's just rock. Users love such features.

Now, the gotcha: if DVD playback breaks, I cannot fix it. I returned my
DVD laptop to Fluendo and no longer own a DVD player. Important detail.
I can and will help fixing it, but I cannot fix it. I'll leave the final
decision of including 0.8.11 in 2.12.0 up to you. My suggestion is a
'yes'.

Ronald