[XviD-devel] Development status

[Edouard Gomez]

Hey hey,

Writing an email to clear development status, tell where we are, and
where we would like to go.

TOC:
1. 1.0 Shedule.
2. CVS branches
3. Upcoming features in 1.1 or even 1.0.x
4. Arch/tla archive

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1. 1.0 Shedule.

I  think we  covered all  bugs  found with  the RC3  release. I  propose
another RC  for this  week end. We  will then  give a 1  week or  2 week
timeslice to allow users find remaining bugs.

After this 1/2  week delay, if no bugs are found,  RC4 is simply renamed
final.  Else depending  on bugs  severity,  a new  RC or  final will  be
released. So in my opinion,  XviD's schedule obeys the "when it's ready"
moto.

Are you all ok with this ?

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
2. CVS branches

Here's a summary of what branch is supposed to be, its state, and ...
blablabla, no more excuses for sysKin about "i forgot the name branch
to commit this stuff to" ;-)

  ** release-1_0-branch
     With xvid 1.0.0 nearing completion, i created a dedicated branch to
     continue bugfixing commits. All 1.0.x revisions will be tagged on
     this branch.

  ** dev-api-4
     This never ending branch served its purpose, bring us 1.0 base
     code. So it's now declared officially dead, and no one is supposed
     to ever commit stuff there anymore.

  ** HEAD
     This sticky branch will be used to develop 1.1 code base. It's
     already different than release-1_0-branch as pete commited his
     brightness control code. The rule is simple, release-1_0-branch
     bugfixing will always does its path to HEAD, non intrusive
     features of HEAD can go to release-1_0. The non intrusive nature
     of a patch is to be discussed by the submitter and the one that
     volunteers 1.0 maintainership.

  ** April 1st tree
     ... hmm forget about that one, however the code is still available
     on my site for people wondering how it was done.

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3. Upcoming features in 1.1 or even 1.0.x

The fun part for hackers, some features are simply already in the patch
queue, others are part of a wishlist.

Patch queue:
 - Complete postprocessing code (brightness is done, what is the dering
   status ?)
 - PPC port merge (already commited to my arch/tla head following
   branch, i'll just wait for main author feedback about probable merge
   mess)
 - Fast ME refactoring (syskin may tell the status)
 - RD optimized ME for BFrames (still sysKin stuff)

WishList:
 - Clean the plugin mess, i think it's just better to export the
   Encoder struct. However, this requires some big cleanup in the
   structures, to make sure, the interface will not use duplicated
   structures between internal and public API layers.
 - My RC 2pass rewrite was just aiming at fixing VFW code
   implementation errors. I know the ideas on which the code is based,
   are way too simple to be true at low bitrates where distortion and
   high unpredictability of frame size make it really having hard time
   controling the bitrate efficiently. I'm open to new/less flawed
   ideas.
 - [Open discussion put here what you would like]

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4. Arch/tla archive

I know arch/tla has a growing popularity amongst GNU/Linux developers,
so maybe someone is already using arch/tla with my archive. So I have
to advertise here what branches do what:

So my archive is still:
http://ed.gomez.free.fr/arch-repositories/ed.gomez@free.fr--2004-1/

http://www.sourcecontrol.net mirrors my archive just in case free.org is
down (quite often)

  ** xvidcore--devapi4-ppc--1.0
     Used to dev the PPC port with christoph naegeli.
     This work is already merged in xvidcore--head--0.0, so don't use
     this branch anymore.
  ** xvidcore--head--0.0
     Used to follow CVS head development.
  ** xvidcore--stable--1.0
     Used to follow release-1_0-branch development.
  ** xvidcore--devapi4--1.0
     As its CVS cousin, officially no more used.

Don't forget, this  tla archive is maintained by hand  (mines) so it can
be unsynced  with CVS (in  both ways, some  stuff may be  commited there
before it  goes to CVS, and  vice versa). But it  presents the advantage
to be an atomic  way to get xvid sources and report  bugs for known tree
states.

This email is already too long,  i hope someone will read it entirely at
least.

-- 
Edouard Gomez