Re: Debian 9 t: Update Gstreamer Base plugins package to resolve a Gstreamer bug

[Dinesh Iyer]

Hi Henrique,
Thanks very much for detailing the steps involved in getting this patch
into a stable Debian 9 release. It looks like I have to do a bunch of
testing before I file a bug to get this change into a stable Debian 9
release or even a backport.


Regards,
Dinesh

On Sun, May 6, 2018 at 7:06 AM, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh 
wrote:

> On Sat, 05 May 2018, Liam O'Toole wrote:
> > On 2018-05-05, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh  wrote:
> > > On Fri, 04 May 2018, Dinesh Iyer wrote:
> > >> "You'll have to talk to whoever is providing you your older version of
> > >> GStreamer. They will have to backport the fix to that old version,
> but it
> > >> should just cleanly apply to the older versions."
> > >>
> > >> The patch that needs to be applied is:
> > >> https://github.com/GStreamer/gst-plugins-base/commit/
> 9f9000e693694ea33c21607140ffc29aa1734062#diff-
> acf6f1abae3d918458c7a91ce8a0b3ad
> > >>
> > >> Is this something that would be possible to do? This would really
> help me
> > >> as this stall is a show stopper for my application.
> > >
> > > Talking in the general way, yes, it is possible.  I am not one of the
> > > DDs responsible for gstream, though.  So all I can tell you is how it
> > > would go for one of the packages I am responsible for:
> > >
> > > Since a stable update is needed, one has to go the long way to get the
> > > Debian stable release manager to approve it (it doesn't depend only on
> > > the DD responsible for the package).
> > >
> > > First, you get the fix into unstable (either through a patch, or by
> > > ensuring an already fixed version is present).  And wait for it to
> > > migrate to testing (usually, five-seven days).
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > At this point wouldn't it be easier to get the fix into
> > stretch-backports?
>
> Yes, backports is alwasy easier.  But it reaches a lot less people.
> Your choice, really.
>
> --
>   Henrique Holschuh
>
>

Re: Debian 9 t: Update Gstreamer Base plugins package to resolve a Gstreamer bug

[Henrique de Moraes Holschuh]

On Sat, 05 May 2018, Liam O'Toole wrote:
> On 2018-05-05, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh  wrote:
> > On Fri, 04 May 2018, Dinesh Iyer wrote:
> >> "You'll have to talk to whoever is providing you your older version of
> >> GStreamer. They will have to backport the fix to that old version, but it
> >> should just cleanly apply to the older versions."
> >> 
> >> The patch that needs to be applied is:
> >> https://github.com/GStreamer/gst-plugins-base/commit/9f9000e693694ea33c21607140ffc29aa1734062#diff-acf6f1abae3d918458c7a91ce8a0b3ad
> >> 
> >> Is this something that would be possible to do? This would really help me
> >> as this stall is a show stopper for my application.
> >
> > Talking in the general way, yes, it is possible.  I am not one of the
> > DDs responsible for gstream, though.  So all I can tell you is how it
> > would go for one of the packages I am responsible for:
> >
> > Since a stable update is needed, one has to go the long way to get the
> > Debian stable release manager to approve it (it doesn't depend only on
> > the DD responsible for the package).
> >
> > First, you get the fix into unstable (either through a patch, or by
> > ensuring an already fixed version is present).  And wait for it to
> > migrate to testing (usually, five-seven days).
> 
> [...]
> 
> At this point wouldn't it be easier to get the fix into
> stretch-backports?

Yes, backports is alwasy easier.  But it reaches a lot less people.
Your choice, really.

-- 
  Henrique Holschuh

Re: Debian 9 t: Update Gstreamer Base plugins package to resolve a Gstreamer bug

[Liam O'Toole]

On 2018-05-05, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh  wrote:
> On Fri, 04 May 2018, Dinesh Iyer wrote:
>> "You'll have to talk to whoever is providing you your older version of
>> GStreamer. They will have to backport the fix to that old version, but it
>> should just cleanly apply to the older versions."
>> 
>> The patch that needs to be applied is:
>> https://github.com/GStreamer/gst-plugins-base/commit/9f9000e693694ea33c21607140ffc29aa1734062#diff-acf6f1abae3d918458c7a91ce8a0b3ad
>> 
>> Is this something that would be possible to do? This would really help me
>> as this stall is a show stopper for my application.
>
> Talking in the general way, yes, it is possible.  I am not one of the
> DDs responsible for gstream, though.  So all I can tell you is how it
> would go for one of the packages I am responsible for:
>
> Since a stable update is needed, one has to go the long way to get the
> Debian stable release manager to approve it (it doesn't depend only on
> the DD responsible for the package).
>
> First, you get the fix into unstable (either through a patch, or by
> ensuring an already fixed version is present).  And wait for it to
> migrate to testing (usually, five-seven days).

[...]

At this point wouldn't it be easier to get the fix into
stretch-backports?

Re: Debian 9 t: Update Gstreamer Base plugins package to resolve a Gstreamer bug

[Henrique de Moraes Holschuh]

On Fri, 04 May 2018, Dinesh Iyer wrote:
> "You'll have to talk to whoever is providing you your older version of
> GStreamer. They will have to backport the fix to that old version, but it
> should just cleanly apply to the older versions."
> 
> The patch that needs to be applied is:
> https://github.com/GStreamer/gst-plugins-base/commit/9f9000e693694ea33c21607140ffc29aa1734062#diff-acf6f1abae3d918458c7a91ce8a0b3ad
> 
> Is this something that would be possible to do? This would really help me
> as this stall is a show stopper for my application.

Talking in the general way, yes, it is possible.  I am not one of the
DDs responsible for gstream, though.  So all I can tell you is how it
would go for one of the packages I am responsible for:

Since a stable update is needed, one has to go the long way to get the
Debian stable release manager to approve it (it doesn't depend only on
the DD responsible for the package).

First, you get the fix into unstable (either through a patch, or by
ensuring an already fixed version is present).  And wait for it to
migrate to testing (usually, five-seven days).

Then, you need to also test the fix throughoutly, as applied to the
Debian stable codebase:  you'd get the current source packages for
gstreamer in Debian stable, apply the required patches, and do a lot of
testing to ensure it caused no regressions _and_ fixed the issue
properly.

Then you file a bug, severity important or above, with a full
description of the issue, how to recreate it, why it is really important
to have it fixed.

You also describe in that bug report all the testing the change has seen
(how much time since it is upstream, how much time it has been on Debian
unstable and testing, etc).  You describe all the testing you did on the
modified Debian stable package with the fix.  You describe the results
of this testing.

This bug report is *IMPORTANT*, and yes, it is a lot of work.  But don't
shortcut it: how well you do this is directly related to the chances of
the stable update being approved by the release manager.  I know that
from experience (it is no easier for a DD to get a stable update
approved, we need to do all that work as well).

Please title the bug report with "stable update request: " or
something like that.  The maintainer can then provide extra info to the
bug report, retitle and reassign it to the stable release team as
required per Debian procedures.

-- 
  Henrique Holschuh

Debian 9 t: Update Gstreamer Base plugins package to resolve a Gstreamer bug

[Dinesh Iyer]

Hi team,
I develop applications that does multimedia I/O on Linux. I have noticed
stalls on Debian 9 due to a bug in Gstreamer 1.10. The Gstreamer developers
have acknowledged this as a bug and have fixed this for the 1.14 line of
Gstreamer. As I use the Gstreamer that comes by default on the platform,
this fix needs to be ported to  the 1.10 line.

The bug report is here: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=795551

The dev who fixed the bug had the following comment:
"You'll have to talk to whoever is providing you your older version of
GStreamer. They will have to backport the fix to that old version, but it
should just cleanly apply to the older versions."

The patch that needs to be applied is:
https://github.com/GStreamer/gst-plugins-base/commit/9f9000e693694ea33c21607140ffc29aa1734062#diff-acf6f1abae3d918458c7a91ce8a0b3ad

Is this something that would be possible to do? This would really help me
as this stall is a show stopper for my application.

Regards,
Dinesh