Re: [Ekiga-devel-list] Ekiga and x264 in Debian main (was Re: Trunk: OPAL Fax problem)

[Matthias Schneider <ma30002000 yahoo de>]

Hi Eugen,
see my answers inline.



--- Eugen Dedu <Eugen Dedu pu-pm univ-fcomte fr> schrieb am So, 18.5.2008:

> Von: Eugen Dedu <Eugen Dedu pu-pm univ-fcomte fr>
> Betreff: Re: [Ekiga-devel-list] Ekiga and x264 in Debian main (was Re: Trunk: OPAL Fax problem)
> An: "Ekiga development mailing list" <ekiga-devel-list gnome org>
> Datum: Sonntag, 18. Mai 2008, 15:53
> Matthias Schneider wrote:
> > Quoting Luca Capello <luca pca it>:
> > 
> >> Hi there!
> >>
> >> On Thu, 08 May 2008 11:47:38 +0200, Damien Sandras
> wrote:
> >>> Le jeudi 08 mai 2008 Ã  11:45 +0200, Torsten
> Schlabach a écrit :
> >>>> Gismo / Luca wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> If ekiga build-depends on
> >>>>> x264 (which, BTW, is *still* not
> present as a Debian package, neither in
> >>>>> non-free), ekiga itself will have to
> be put in non-free, which is
> >>>>> something I won't prefer.
> >>>> No, we don't want that I think.
> >>> It is a pwlib plugin, so it can be packaged
> separately, and that
> >>> specific plugin can be put in non-free.
> >> Isn't instead an OPAL dependency?  However,
> this won't solve anything,
> >> as far as I understood Matthias at [1].  But as a
> disclaimer, I haven't
> >> checked ekiga trunk lately.
> >>
> >> Please re-read the definition of the Debian
> categories [2]: a Debian
> >> package to be in main (thus distributed with
> official CDs) must
> >> build-depend only on software present in main.
> >>
> >> This means that if opal build-depends on x264
> (which is, let's say, in
> >> non-free), then opal cannot be part of main.  My
> previous statement that
> >> in this case opal (well, I wrote ekiga...) has to
> be put in non-free is
> >> wrong: opal can go into contrib, since opal itself
> is a "free package
> >> which requires [...]  a non-free package for
> compilation".  As a result,
> >> ekiga has to be put in contrib, since ekiga
> build-depends on opal, which
> >> isn't in main.
> >>
> >> This situation will slow ekiga adoption, which is
> something I don't want
> >> to see.
> >>
> >> Thx, bye,
> >> Gismo / Luca
> >>
> >> Footnotes:
> >> [1]
> http://mail.gnome.org/archives/ekiga-devel-list/2008-May/msg00023.html
> >> [2]
> http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-archive.html#s-sections
> >>
> > Sorry, forgot to send the following mail to the
> list...:
> > About the packages issue, I suppose that there should
> be packages like this:
> > ekiga
> > opal includes h.261 & theora or depends opal-h261
> & oapl-theora
> > ptlib
> > opal-h263p depends libavcodec
> > opal-mpeg4 depends libavcodec
> > opal-h264 depends libavcodec & libx264
> > opal / opal-theora depends libtheora
> > 
> > ekiga/opal recommends opal-h263p, mpeg4, x264
> > 
> > The opal-x packages can have different states on
> ubuntu or debian, whether there
> > is a non-free or whatever repository or some
> unofficial add-on repository...
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I am doing the proposed modifications, thanks for the idea.
> 
> 1. I grouped all libpt-snapshot-plugins-* packages into one
> package, 
> libpt-snapshot-plugins.

Is this a good idea? I think stable has many separate plugins, since each plugin has different dependencies, at least I think so...

> 
> 2. Does opal, which is a library, depend on libspeex, or
> ekiga?
OPAL does, for echo cancelation, and of course the speex plugin does for the speex codec itself.

> 3. For opal, I see the following video codecs:
> libopal-snapshot/usr/lib/ptlib-snapshot/opal-3.3.0/codecs/video:
> total 776
> -rw-r--r-- 1 dedu 344240 May 17 22:16
> h261-vic_video_pwplugin.so
> -rw-r--r-- 1 dedu 107144 May 17 22:16
> h263-1998_video_pwplugin.so
> -rw-r--r-- 1 dedu  63000 May 17 22:16
> h263-ffmpeg_video_pwplugin.so
> -rw-r--r-- 1 dedu  79352 May 17 22:16
> h264_video_pwplugin.so
> -rwxr-xr-x 1 dedu  40168 May 17 22:16
> h264_video_pwplugin_helper
> -rw-r--r-- 1 dedu  81624 May 17 22:16
> mpeg4-ffmpeg_video_pwplugin.so
> -rw-r--r-- 1 dedu  65088 May 17 22:16
> theora_video_pwplugin.so
> 
> Should both h263-1998 and h263-ffmpeg be put in the
> opal-h263 package? 
> What's the difference between them?  Is there one
> better than another, 
> and the other can be removed?

Consider them different codecs. H.263+ (1998) is the newer one, not compatible withe H.263 (at least their encapsulation). H.263 has been declared obsolete by IETF, but not by ITU. H.263 depends on a hackish patched version of ffmpeg, while all the other codecs depend on "normal" ffmpeg. I propose to leave it out for now (and stick only to H.263+), if it is ok for damien.

> Also, is the h264_video_pwplugin_helper file useful or is a
> packaging error?
Both 
h264_video_pwplugin.so
and
h264_video_pwplugin_helper
belong to the h264 package. The helper is the gpled executable that loads the x264 library.

> Finally, is it possible to compile h264 only?  If yes, what
> is the 
> ./configure or ./autogen.sh command line?  I will look
> myself too, but 
> if you already know the answer, please tell me.

No, not really... Does this help in the package building? I will probably revise the build system in the future, but I do not know if I want to put so much effort in the current one...


> 
> -- 
> Eugen




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