[FFmpeg-devel] Sideinfo in packets

[Ivan Kalvachev]

On 4/18/11, Michael Niedermayer <michaelni at gmx.at> wrote:
> Hi
>
> several people complained about the sideinfo "shit" i pulled of libav
>
> it breaks ABI very strongly, yes i know (and i wonder if libav devels
> know)
>
> Its a nightmare for applications because no sane human passes streams
> like this
>
> For the first ill soon add a remote branch that is free of this abi
> breakage. This will be maintained as long as there are volunteers to
> maintain it. Ill do it as long as its easy (which i expect it to be)
>
> For the second, ill work on some merge/split sideinfo code.
> Plan is that user apps never see the sideinfo and just have
> a flat bytestream in AVPacket.data
> This will be either enabled by default or by some flag
>
> comments welcome

I'm not quite sure what the sideinfo thing is supposed to do, so I
cannot comment on the technical side.

Let me be the first to say it.
Remove IT.
If you want to work on cleaning it up, put IT into the separate branch.

1. We are FFmpeg. We don't have to keep bug-to-bug compatibility with upstream.
2. We are in release cycle. It is the worst time to break ABI/API.
3. I told you that the big intrusive changes and breakages are sure
way to repel users/downstream. Let libav learn this the hard way. We
should not cripple ourselves just to be on equal standing with them.


Now,
These kind of incidents are getting more and more common and are
turning into a problem.

I think it may be good idea to post the changes on this maillist, so
we can review them before they hit the official repo. Wait for a day
to hear objections and if there are none, push them.

I would suspect that this would be a lot harder than just merging them, but...