blog/archive/2021/05/05.rss

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   4                 <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries from May 2021</title>
   5                 <description>Entries from May 2021</description>
   6                 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/</link>
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   9         <item>
  10                 <title>VLC bittorrent plugin in Bullseye, saved by the bell?</title>
  11                 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/VLC_bittorrent_plugin_in_Bullseye__saved_by_the_bell_.html</link>
  12                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/VLC_bittorrent_plugin_in_Bullseye__saved_by_the_bell_.html</guid>
  13                 <pubDate>Sat, 1 May 2021 11:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
  14                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Yesterday morning I got a warning call from the Debian quality
  15 control system that
  16 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/vlc-plugin-bittorrent&quot;&gt;the VLC
  17 bittorrent plugin&lt;/a&gt; was due to be removed because of a release
  18 critical bug in one of its dependencies.  As you might remember, this
  19 plugin make VLC able to stream videos directly from a bittorrent
  20 source using both torrent files and magnet links, similar to using a
  21 HTTP source.  I believe such protocol support is a vital feature in
  22 VLC, allowing efficient streaming from sources such at the almost 7
  23 million movies in &lt;a href=&quot;https://archive.org/&quot;&gt;the Internet
  24 Archive&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  25
  26 &lt;p&gt;The dependency was the unmaintained
  27 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libtorrent-rasterbar&quot;&gt;libtorrent-rasterbar&lt;/a&gt;
  28 package, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/987306&quot;&gt;the bug in
  29 question&lt;/a&gt; blocked its python library from working properly.  As I
  30 did not want Bullseye to release without bittorrent support in VLC, I
  31 set out to check out the status, and track down a fix for the problem.
  32 Luckily the issue had already been identified and fixed upstream,
  33 providing everything needed.  All I needed to do was to fetch the
  34 Debian git repository, extract and trim the patch from upstream and
  35 apply it to the Debian package for upload.&lt;/p&gt;
  36
  37 &lt;p&gt;The fixed library was uploaded yesterday evening.  But that is not
  38 enough to get it into Bullseye, as Debian is currently in package
  39 freeze to prepare for a new next stable release.  Only non-critical
  40 packages with
  41 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/ContinuousIntegration/autopkgtest&quot;&gt;autopkgtest
  42 setup&lt;/a&gt; included, in other words able to validate automatically that
  43 the package is working, are allowed to migrate automatically into the
  44 next release at this stage.  And the unmaintained libtorrent-rasterbar
  45 lack such testing, and thus needed a manual override.  I am happy to
  46 report that such manual override was approved a few minutes ago, thus
  47 increasing significantly the chance of VLC bittorrent streaming being
  48 available out of the box also for Debian/Buster users.  A bit too
  49 close shave for my liking, as the Bullseye release is most likely just
  50 a few days away, and this  did feel like the package was saved by the
  51 bell.  I am so glad the warning email showed up in time for me to
  52 handle the issue, and a big thanks go to the Debian Release team for
  53 the quick feedback on
  54 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-release&quot;&gt;#debian-release&lt;/a&gt;
  55 and their &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/987865&quot;&gt;swift
  56 unblocking&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  57
  58 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
  59 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
  60 &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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