Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: Alexis Ballier <aballier@g.o>
To: gentoo-dev@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] chromium-54 needs ffmpeg-3.0.1
Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 12:06:38
Message-Id: 20160831140620.30a8f7d5@gentoo.org
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-dev] chromium-54 needs ffmpeg-3.0.1 by Kent Fredric
1 On Wed, 31 Aug 2016 23:36:21 +1200
2 Kent Fredric <kentnl@g.o> wrote:
3
4 > On Wed, 31 Aug 2016 09:43:08 +0200
5 > Alexis Ballier <aballier@g.o> wrote:
6 >
7 > > nobody is talking about a premature unmask and even less about
8 > > firefox :)
9 >
10 > Right. My bad on the FF :) ( ffmpeg having FF in it is clearly
11 > perturbing my brain )
12 >
13 > But my point really is that *chromium* has end users desiring
14 > latest-and-greatest for valid security reasons.
15 >
16 > And the strategy of allowing temporary USE masking means the
17 > life-cycles of stabilization between Chromium and ffmpeg don't need
18 > to be tied together.
19 >
20 > That way we're not motivated to push stabilization of ffmpeg into end
21 > users systems in order to satisfy the security cycles of Chromium, so
22 > we can get Chromium stable and secure without necessitating we do the
23 > same with ffmpeg.
24 >
25 > And as stabilizing/unmasking ffmpeg relies mostly on the ability for
26 > its reverse dependencies not to be broken, this essentially means
27 > without the USE mask option, our stabliziation/unmasking workflow for
28 > Chromium is now dependent on everything that uses ffmpeg.
29 >
30 > And I'd just rather we not create such a tight, inflexible dependency
31 > that motivates us to propagate breakage when there's a clear path
32 > that doesn't propagate breakage.
33
34
35 For years we've been patching packages to work with >= our latest stable
36 version of ffmpeg/libav and unbundle it. Even mplayer. Chromium shouldnt
37 be any exception.
38
39 Patching consumer packages that way has some advantages:
40 - Maintainers do not need to wait for ffmpeg to be stabilized.
41 - ffmpeg does not need to be stabilized in lockstep with a few dozen
42 packages that work with this only version.
43
44 x 2 if you replace 'stabilized' by 'unmasked' in the above.
45
46
47 Most often it is rather trivial to do; sometimes really annoying (hey
48 gst)...

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-dev] chromium-54 needs ffmpeg-3.0.1 Rich Freeman <rich0@g.o>