Present Perfect

Ogg/Vorbis

Someone from Vorbis who also hangs out in #gstreamer asked me if I could do RPM's for the 1.0 release. So I spent this weekend massaging the builds and trying to get good packages that are easy to install.

It's not entirely possible to get right. First of all, Vorbis used the naming scheme for release candidates that I dislike. Second, Red Hat used that name in the version, which I consider a mistake. The packages are named as follows: libvorbis-1.0rc3-1.*.rpm. This means that you cannot convince rpm that the new libvorbis-1.0-1.*.rpm RPMS are newer, unless you use the dirtiest trick in the rpm book : Epochs. And Ximian followed their example (it probably wasn't easy anyway to do it differently).

So if you use Epochs, your specs are always forced to use them, since any package with an Epoch is considered newer than one without.

So now they upgrade from the previous ones. But - there are RPM's out there that specifically state they require libvorbis >= 1.0rc3, which is an even bigger problem. At GStreamer we made the same mistake, and xmms from Ximian also depends on it this way. The thing is that rpm at that point doesn't know that libvorbis-1.0 has an Epoch: that is bigger than the libvorbis-1.0rc3 one in the case where that second one isn't installed.

So then you pull some dirty tricks (that are supposed to work, and seemed to, for me), to make rpm believe that this new RPM actually provides libvorbis = 1.0rc3, and the same for the betas.

Then I ran into the kicker problem - since libvorbisfile and libvorbisenc had their CURRENT lib version increased, but libvorbis hasn't, my Ximian xmms package complains about libvorbisfile.so.0 being needed when I want to upgrade. There's no easy way around this at all.

The packages could have been parallel-installable, if libvorbis.so had also had a CURRENT version increase, but it hasn't. So installing both packages will have conflicts.

So I'm currently wondering about asking the vorbis guys to also increase the CURRENT version, or putting vorbisfile and vorbisenc in a separate package. For that I had better ask what the debian maintainer is doing.

Luckily, the 1.0 release has been delayed a little due to last-minute spec additions. That's a good thing - the 1.0 release will come with full specs !

So, hat off to the excellent Ogg Vorbis developers, especially to Monty !

Boston

I still can't believe this is actually for real. I'm going to Boston tomorrow !The Gnome guys wanted some people from GStreamer at the Boston Summit. Originally, Nat Friedman asked for Erik, since it's his project. Erik can't make it, so he recommended me. And now Ximian is flying me over to do a presentation on developing with GStreamer, and a workshop on building a Gnome Media Player.

I'm not entirely sure I'm the right man for the job, and it's such short notice that I'm not sure if I'll be able to get the presentation done properly, but I'll sure give it my best. It's exciting, since I haven't been to the US before. And I sure want to see MIT and Ximian.

It was hell getting it all arranged - confirmation from Nat, getting airplane tickets (The funny thing is that Belgium has a new private airliner, which flies only to NY, Boston and LA, and the flights are pretty cheap at 280 EURO round-trip, but the kicker is they don't fly on Wednesday, which is when I'm going), getting my international passport arranged (I should be able to collect it tomorrow morning, if not then I can't leave), arranging work stuff, and so on.

But everything is set, and the only possible problem is my passport. Hope it works out ;)

gst-editor

wingo has done some very nice work on the editor. It's actually usable again and I'm considering shoehorning it into the talk. You can now save and load pipelines, connect and disconnect, and stuff just plays. Really sweet.

Wingo is also coming to the Gnome summit, so I get to meet him for real. I'm also going to see dobey, meet lots of other Ximian people I've heard about, and see some people again from Guadec, like jdub (with pants), and Luis, the bugmeister.

Ellen

Happy birthday to my girlfriend. I hope she likes the presents I got her, since I liked hers for my birthday.

Ogg/Vorbis Someone from Vorbis who also hangs out in #gstreamer asked me if I could do RPM's for the 1.0 release. So I spent this weekend massaging the builds and...