blog/archive/2025/02/02.rss

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   4                 <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries from February 2025</title>
   5                 <description>Entries from February 2025</description>
   6                 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/</link>
   7
   8
   9         <item>
  10                 <title>New oggz release 1.1.2 after 15 years</title>
  11                 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/New_oggz_release_1_1_2_after_15_years.html</link>
  12                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/New_oggz_release_1_1_2_after_15_years.html</guid>
  13                 <pubDate>Sun, 9 Feb 2025 01:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
  14                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A little over a week ago, I noticed
  15 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/liboggz&quot;&gt;the liboggz
  16 package&lt;/a&gt; on my Debian dashboard had not had a new upstream release
  17 for a while.  A closer look showed that its last release, version
  18 1.1.1, happened in 2010.  A few patches had accumulated in the Debian
  19 package, and I even noticed that I had passed on these patches to
  20 upstream five years ago.  A handful crash bugs had been reported
  21 against the Debian package, and looking at the upstream repository I
  22 even found a few crash bugs reported there too.  To add insult to
  23 injury, I discovered that upstream had accumulated several fixes in the
  24 years between 2010 and now, and many of them had not made their way
  25 into the Debian package.  I decided enough was enough, and that a new
  26 upstream release was needed fixing these nasty crash bugs.  Luckily I
  27 am also a member of the Xiph team, aka upstream, and could actually go
  28 to work immediately to fix it.&lt;/p&gt;
  29
  30 &lt;p&gt;I started by adding automatic build testing on
  31 &lt;a href=&quot;https://gitlab.xiph.org/xiph/liboggz&quot;&gt;the Xiph gitlab oggz
  32 instance&lt;/a&gt;, to get a better idea of the state of affairs with the
  33 code base.  This exposed a few build problems, which I had to fix.  In
  34 parallel to this, I sent an email announcing my wish for a new release
  35 to every person who had committed to the upstream code base since
  36 2010, and asked for help doing a new release both on email and on the
  37 #xiph IRC channel.  Sadly only a fraction of their email providers
  38 accepted my email.  But Ralph Giles in the Xiph team came to the
  39 rescue and provided invaluable help to guide be through the release
  40 Xiph process.  While this was going on, I spent a few days tracking
  41 down the crash bugs with good help from
  42 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.valgrind.org/&quot;&gt;valgrind&lt;/a&gt;, and came up with
  43 patch proposals to get rid of at least these specific crash bugs.  The
  44 open issues also had to be checked.  Several of them proved to be
  45 fixed already, but a few I had to creat patches for.  I also checked
  46 out the Debian, Arch, Fedora, Suse and Gentoo packages to see if there
  47 were patches applied in these Linux distributions that should be
  48 passed upstream.  The end result was ready yesterday.  A new liboggz
  49 release, version 1.1.2, was tagged, wrapped up and published on the
  50 project page.  And today, the new release was uploaded into
  51 Debian.&lt;/p&gt;
  52
  53 &lt;p&gt;You are probably by now curious on what actually changed in the
  54 library.  I guess the most interesting new feature was support for
  55 Opus and VP8.  Almost all other changes were stability or
  56 documentation fixes.  The rest were related to the gitlab continuous
  57 integration testing.  All in all, this was really a minor update,
  58 hence the version bump only from 1.1.1 to to 1.1.2, but it was long
  59 overdue and I am very happy that it is out the door.&lt;/p&gt;
  60
  61 &lt;p&gt;One change proposed upstream was not included this time, as it
  62 extended the API and changed some of the existing library methods, and
  63 thus require a major SONAME bump and possibly code changes in every
  64 program using the library.  As I am not that familiar with the code
  65 base, I am unsure if I am the right person to evaluate the change.
  66 Perhaps later.&lt;/p&gt;
  67
  68 &lt;p&gt;Since the release was tagged, a few minor fixes has been committed
  69 upstream already: automatic testing the cross building to Windows, and
  70 documentation updates linking to the correct project page.  If a
  71 important issue is discovered with this release, I guess a new release
  72 might happen soon including the minor fixes.  If not, perhaps they can
  73 wait fifteen years. :)&lt;/p&gt;
  74
  75 &lt;p&gt;I would like to send a big thank you to everyone that helped make
  76 this release happen, from the people adding fixes upstream over the
  77 course of fifteen years, to the ones reporting crash bugs, other bugs
  78 and those maintaining the package in various Linux distributions.
  79 Thank you very much for your time and interest.&lt;/p&gt;
  80
  81 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
  82 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
  83 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
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