Hi there, I was quite joyed to discover that at least this mailing list has activity, and that there is even an active git project for flac... because until then, I was firmly under the impression that flac is dead, and has been dead for years. Last website update 3 years ago, last release 5 years ago; tons of unfixed security and data corruption bugs, tons of not integrated patches on the SF.net patch tracker, etc. kind oflead me to that believe. I was already considering to make my own fork, converting the CVS repository (the official repos according to the website :-) etc. But I am totally excited to learn this apparently won't be necessary. :-) So I do have a few questions: 1) Is there any chance the website could be updated? A minimal update would already have a tremendous impact: Just a blurb on the start page that the project is not dead, and a pointer to the new repos and maybe this list / its archive. That way, it would at least be clear where to search for current information. Of course a more thorough update would be nice on the long run, but also much more work would be needed, and I don't know if you have anybody who can take care of it. But the minimal update should be a matter of well less than half an hour work or so, right? If you point me to the sources of the website, I'd even be happy to whip up a patch. 2) Any chance for a new release? Just bug fixes would be enough. I realize you may have new features planned, and that those are not yet done and hence not releasable etc. -- but at least a release based on the last stable one but with the known bugs fixed should be doable, I'd hope? Are there any release plans at all? 3) Does anybody feel responsible for going through the bug and patch trackers at SF.net? E.g. I submitted a patch over 3 years ago that simplified portability to windows (even though I don't even use that ;) and should give a small speed up, and it never was even touched... and there are several more patches that look good on the surface (though they might not apply anymore due to bitrot). If there is something I can do to assist with any of these things, I'll try to help. Cheers, Max
In partial response to myself: On 29.11.2012, at 16:36, Max Horn wrote: [...]> 1) Is there any chance the website could be updated? A minimal update would already have a tremendous impact: Just a blurb on the start page that the project is not dead, and a pointer to the new repos and maybe this list / its archive. That way, it would at least be clear where to search for current information. > > Of course a more thorough update would be nice on the long run, but also much more work would be needed, and I don't know if you have anybody who can take care of it. But the minimal update should be a matter of well less than half an hour work or so, right? If you point me to the sources of the website, I'd even be happy to whip up a patch.OK, so I just discovered this, partially answering my question: http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/flac-dev/2012-August/003436.html But this raises several new questions: The term "scraping" and the rest sound to me as if you don't have write access to the SF.net project, and have not yet asked Josh Coalson about that. I find that odd... To me, it seems only the following 3 options are on the table: 1) If Josh is still active, he should be involved in this already now. 2) If he is not active, then he should be kindly asked to grant such access to a person he trusts; if he doesn't want to be active at all anymore, he should even grant that person admin rights, so that person can take over stewardship. 3) If he is not reachable at all anymore (i.e. no reply to emails after some weeks or so), then a support request should be filed with SF.net to take over the SF.net "flac" project... At least that's what I'd consider normal procedure, based on over a decade working in the OSS realm in general, and with SF.net in particular :-). But I don't mean to tell you how to run this project, just sayin'... Anyway: Once you have access to the SF.net project, you can get the original website source, instead of having to rely on scraping. Also, a redirect from xiph.sf.net to the new location can be setup right away. In particular, I don't see why an update of the website would have to wait till a release is necessary. Quite to the contrary, I think such an update should happen as soon as possible. At least it would have saved me some hours of work investigating the current state of flac :-). Cheers, Max
On 12-11-29 7:52 AM, Max Horn wrote:> http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/flac-dev/2012-August/003436.html > > But this raises several new questions: The term "scraping" and the rest sound to me as if you don't have write access to the SF.net project, and have not yet asked Josh Coalson about that.That's correct. Josh, are you willing to add a redirect to flac.sf.net, or give one of us access so we can do so? My sourceforge username is 'giles'. -r
Max Horn wrote:> 1) Is there any chance the website could be updated?I'd like to have the flac.sf.net website re-directed to https://www.xiph.org/flac/ . Until the re-direct happens the rest of the world still points to sf.net.> 2) Any chance for a new release? Just bug fixes would be > enough.I'd like to do a release some time between now and xmas. That release would be something like what us in Xiph's git right now.> 3) Does anybody feel responsible for going through the bug > and patch trackers at SF.net?I did spend some time going through those. There didn't seem to be much there in terms of valuable patches.> If there is something I can do to assist with any of these things, > I'll try to help.The most useful thing would be to have a second look at the SF bug tracker and see it there is anything there that isn't already fixed in Xiph's git repo. Cheers, Erik -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Erik de Castro Lopo http://www.mega-nerd.com/
On Fri, Nov 30, 2012 at 07:10:44AM +1100, Erik de Castro Lopo wrote:> Max Horn wrote: > > 2) Any chance for a new release? Just bug fixes would be > > enough. > > I'd like to do a release some time between now and xmas. That > release would be something like what us in Xiph's git right > now.Looking at the changes in the include directory since 1.2.1, it seems the C API was extended by one function and the C++ API by ~18 new methods. Are you planning to update the version-info? I see the C++ version-info was changed to 8:0:3, but I think it should actually be 9:0:3. The values in libFLAC{,++}/export.h might need an update too. Also, will it be called 1.2.2? I'd like to make some prerelease rpm packages from the current git snapshot. Thanks for all the work you have put into this. -- Miroslav Lichvar
Hi again, On 29.11.2012, at 21:10, Erik de Castro Lopo wrote:> Max Horn wrote: > >> 1) Is there any chance the website could be updated? > > I'd like to have the flac.sf.net website re-directed to > https://www.xiph.org/flac/ . Until the re-direct happens > the rest of the world still points to sf.net.So we are still waiting for Josh to grant admin rights for the SF.net project to Ralph Giles (SF.net username 'giles') and or Erik (username?), which only requires a few clicks. If Josh does not reply within some more time, you could also simply request the SF.net staff to do this for you, by filing a support request at https://sourceforge.net/p/forge/site-support/new/ Of course they will want to ensure that you have a good case in taking over that SF.net project, esp. since flac is quite high profile. But I am sure that you can convince them, esp. by pointing to the xiph hosted git repos, and perhaps pointing to flac-dev archives which document that Erik is new maintainer, and that Josh knows about this: http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/flac-dev/2012-February/003083.html http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/flac-dev/2012-April/003345.html http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/flac-dev/2012-April/003340.html (the last "Back from hiatus" -- sadly, it seems to have been a rather short return? :-( ) However, that all does not address my main wish: The new website still has exactly (?) the same content as the old one. Could you please at least add a single paragraph (ideally in big red bliniking letters?) that there is new development work in progress, with a link to the new git repos? This would be IMHO a very important and major improvement over the current state of total non-information... If you point me to the sources of the site (is there a repos for it?), I'll be happy to provide a patch for this, too!> >> 2) Any chance for a new release? Just bug fixes would be >> enough. > > I'd like to do a release some time between now and xmas. That > release would be something like what us in Xiph's git right > now. > >> 3) Does anybody feel responsible for going through the bug >> and patch trackers at SF.net? > > I did spend some time going through those. There didn't seem > to be much there in terms of valuable patches. >> If there is something I can do to assist with any of these things, >> I'll try to help. > > The most useful thing would be to have a second look at the > SF bug tracker and see it there is anything there that isn't > already fixed in Xiph's git repo.OK. In order to avoid duplicating efforts, it would be good if everybody who reviews a patch leaves comments there, even if those simply indicate that the patch is obsolete. Until the website gets updated, I think it would also be helpful (for the patch submitter) to include a link to the new git repository. Of course closing those patches (which would be the nice thing to do) would require to have the appropriate rights first, but this can still be done later, as long as the review results are recorded on each item :-). As a start, I verified that my own ancient patch is obsolete now, and closed it myself. Cheers, Max