+ <div class="entry">
+ <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/VLC_bittorrent_plugin_in_Bullseye__saved_by_the_bell_.html">VLC bittorrent plugin in Bullseye, saved by the bell?</a></div>
+ <div class="date"> 1st May 2021</div>
+ <div class="body"><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>
+
+<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>
+</div>
+ <div class="tags">
+
+
+ Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/verkidetfri">verkidetfri</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
+
+
+ </div>
+ </div>
+ <div class="padding"></div>
+
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