[FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH] metadata compatibility layer (part2)

[Aurelien Jacobs]

Michael Niedermayer wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 07, 2009 at 01:21:07AM +0100, Aurelien Jacobs wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > Hi attached patch is the second (and final) part of the metadata
> > compatibility layer. It adds compatibility in the other way around.
> > When a demuxer read metadata and stores it with av_metadata_set(),
> > it automatically fill the old API metadata fields, so that a
> > software using the old API is still able to get metadata from
> > demuxers using the new API.
> > 
> > It is slightly ugly, especially the AVFormatContext pointer stored
> > in the AVMetadata struct, but that's the cleanest way I found.
> > As the struct is not exposed in public API and all of this is
> > just a temporary transition code, I think it is acceptable.
> 
> I think this code is too ugly, i was already very unhappy about the
> last of these compatibility patches but this one is just too much.
> I do not want this or anything similar in a file i have to maintain.

Well, if that's the only problem, I can maintain that file ;-)
Anyway, this code shouldn't require much maintenance (if any).

> Id much rather bump the major version several times.

>From our side, it's obviously much easier to bump major version
and not care about old API at all.
But from the side of the libav* users (and distro maintainers,
etc...) it's much more painful to support such harsh API change.
For software using lavf it means either:
 - stay with the old API and be unusable with ffmpeg's svn
 - upgrade to new API and be unusable with disto's packaged
   ffmpeg (ie. the majority of users)
 - add an equivalent compatibility layer in the software itself
   (or clutter the code with #ifdef), which leads to code
   duplication in every software using lavf
And obviously different software will choose different solutions,
which will lead many people compiling software against FFmpeg
to problems, and not the same problems depending on the
software they build.
This IMO leads to a big mess, and this is the kind of thing
which tarnish ffmpeg's reputation.
So IMO, avoiding this is worth a few dozen line of temporary
code properly under #if.

Aurel