Package: release.debian.org Severity: normal User: release.debian....@packages.debian.org Usertags: transition
Hi, We'd like to remove the celt package from the distro for the Wheezy release. CELT was an experimental codec from Xiph, and that work has now been merged into the Opus codec which is about to be ratified as an IETF standard. As a result of that, upstream is no longer maintaining celt at all, and being an experimental codec, no two releases of it were ever bitstream compatible with each other (and only one release was ever made that even maintained API compatibility with prior versions). All packages using it at the time knew and accepted that this would be the situation with it while it evolved ... The version that Debian currently is shipping we tried to get consensus on people agreeing to consider it an interoperability snapshot before squeeze, but in the end that never actually happened in practice and other distros shipped other incompatible versions of it anyway. So we (meaning myself, upstream, and anyone else who has discussed this with us in detail) see little value in continuing to ship this, and plenty of opportunity for Harm. Apps using it in Debian will only be interoperable with the Debian releases of themselves, there will be no security support, and it will just further fragment the codec space, at a time when there is a real standard alternative people should be looking at for the future. I'd have moved on this sooner, but it's only been in the last few days that we actually had enough certainty about the IETF process concluding to really know what the foreseeable future of all this was going to be. I've already been actively talking to upstreams of the affected packages to be sure we might actually pull this off in the time we have remaining, and I'm sure enough that this will be possible now to really propose a formal course of action for Wheezy. We've been planning for this in general terms for years now, but nothing could actually move until the IETF did. And now they have. Death, taxes, and bad timing. Anyhow, this actually should be fairly simple, being an experimental codec almost everything already has support for only optionally enabling it. So we just need sourceful uploads of packages to turn it off - then celt can safely be removed. Some of the deps have already been updated to remove it, the remaining ones as of yesterday were: # Broken Depends: gst-plugins-bad0.10: gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad jack-audio-connection-kit: jackd1 jackd2: jackd2 libjack-jackd2-0 mangler: libventrilo3-0 opal: libopal3.10.4 [amd64 armel armhf i386 ia64 kfreebsd-amd64 kfreebsd-i386 mips mipsel powerpc s390 s390x sparc] roaraudio: libroar2 roaraudio Opal I've been told will remove it with its next upload. Mangler appears to be under control, details here: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=674244 gst, I've spoken to upstream and this is a no-brainer, but I still need to get a ping back from slomo about updating the package. jack should be just disable the option too, but I'm still chasing its Debian maintainer for confirmation of doing it. Worst case I should be able to do a trivial NMU myself. Roar, I've been assured by its upstream is likewise easy to just disable support for it - but the-me is giving me some pointless pushback ... I'll NMU that too when the time comes if really needed if this is the final blocker. There shouldn't be any other flow on from this so far as I know. Some of these packages may enable Opus support instead, but doing so is not a prerequisite for us being able to remove celt for Wheezy. Thanks! Ron -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org