-<p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
-activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
-<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <item>
- <title>VLC bittorrent plugin in Bullseye, saved by the bell?</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/VLC_bittorrent_plugin_in_Bullseye__saved_by_the_bell_.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/VLC_bittorrent_plugin_in_Bullseye__saved_by_the_bell_.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sat, 1 May 2021 11:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>Yesterday morning I got a warning call from the Debian quality
-control system that
-<a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/vlc-plugin-bittorrent">the VLC
-bittorrent plugin</a> was due to be removed because of a release
-critical bug in one of its dependencies. As you might remember, this
-plugin make VLC able to stream videos directly from a bittorrent
-source using both torrent files and magnet links, similar to using a
-HTTP source. I believe such protocol support is a vital feature in
-VLC, allowing efficient streaming from sources such at the almost 7
-million movies in <a href="https://archive.org/">the Internet
-Archive</a>.</p>
-
-<p>The dependency was the unmaintained
-<a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libtorrent-rasterbar">libtorrent-rasterbar</a>
-package, and <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/987306">the bug in
-question</a> blocked its python library from working properly. As I
-did not want Bullseye to release without bittorrent support in VLC, I
-set out to check out the status, and track down a fix for the problem.
-Luckily the issue had already been identified and fixed upstream,
-providing everything needed. All I needed to do was to fetch the
-Debian git repository, extract and trim the patch from upstream and
-apply it to the Debian package for upload.</p>
-
-<p>The fixed library was uploaded yesterday evening. But that is not
-enough to get it into Bullseye, as Debian is currently in package
-freeze to prepare for a new next stable release. Only non-critical
-packages with
-<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/ContinuousIntegration/autopkgtest">autopkgtest
-setup</a> included, in other words able to validate automatically that
-the package is working, are allowed to migrate automatically into the
-next release at this stage. And the unmaintained libtorrent-rasterbar
-lack such testing, and thus needed a manual override. I am happy to
-report that such manual override was approved a few minutes ago, thus
-increasing significantly the chance of VLC bittorrent streaming being
-available out of the box also for Debian/Buster users. A bit too
-close shave for my liking, as the Bullseye release is most likely just
-a few days away, and this did feel like the package was saved by the
-bell. I am so glad the warning email showed up in time for me to
-handle the issue, and a big thanks go to the Debian Release team for
-the quick feedback on
-<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-release">#debian-release</a>
-and their <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/987865">swift
-unblocking</a>.</p>
-