Bug 478371

Summary:	qtmultimedia should be optional
Product:	[Applications] kasts	Reporter:	Salvo "LtWorf" Tomaselli <tiposchi>
Component:	general	Assignee:	bart
Status:	REPORTED ---
Severity:	normal
Priority:	NOR
Version First Reported In:	23.08.4
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Debian unstable
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Salvo "LtWorf" Tomaselli 2023-12-10 21:53:39 UTC

SUMMARY

Right now you document that qtmultimedia is broken and should not be used.

However your cmake file says that qtmultimedia is compulsory and kasts can't be compiled without it.

Which means that users will have the option in the UI to use a broken backend that is known to not work.

It should be made optional, so that it can be removed from the dependencies, so that users will not see that option in their GUI and will not have the possibility of picking it.

Comment 1 bart 2023-12-11 12:54:27 UTC

Well, the situation is complicated, and the current approach is intended as a compromise.

Firstly, while qtmultimedia has several known issues with no known solutions, it is not completely broken.  It does provide the basic functionality (although buggy).  In very rare cases it can even play or stream files that VLC cannot.

Secondly, Kasts aims to support linux, freebsd, windows and android.  The only common backend that works on all these platforms is qtmultimedia, hence it being mandatory despite the known bugs.

On linux, yes, by all means I would like to remove qtmultimedia and gstreamer and make VLC mandatory.  However, this will then interfere with distributions like fedora that are very hardcore concerning codecs and don't even ship VLC in their standard repositories.

Let me think about better solutions that won't introduce more problems downstream than the current one.

Comment 2 Salvo "LtWorf" Tomaselli 2023-12-12 16:05:13 UTC

Perhaps it could be easier to patch it out in debian instead?