hm.  i missed the "codeina" part, which after some web searching, i
guess it handles the finding, purchasing, downloading, installing,
and updating of fluendo codecs?  if so then cool.
ed

On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 11:12:24AM -0700, Edward Pilatowicz wrote:
> some comments below.
> note that i'm not a member of the IPS team, a packaging expert,
> etc.  but i did buy the currently available fluendo codecs so
> i'm replying because i'm an interested customer.  ;)
> ed
>
> On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 03:16:04AM -0500, Brian Cameron wrote:
> >
> > I am currently working with some engineers at Fluendo to help them
> > provide their media plugins for OpenSolaris and also to help make
> > the codeina program work on both Solaris and OpenSolaris.  I have
> > a few questions I am hoping you can help with.
> >
> > The codeina client program sets 4 variables to identify what system
> > its running on.  These are: OS, ARCH, DISTRO and DISTRO_VERSION.
> > These don't need to all be set to unqiue values for each Solaris
> > or OpenSolaris release, but instead only need to identify if Fluendo
> > needs to ship different packages for a given system.  So, in other
> > words, DISTRO_VERSION probably only needs to be incremented if the
> > packaging system or binary compatibly changes between versions.
> >
> > We were thinking it would make sense to set OS to Python's
> > os.uname() value.  It returns 'SunOS' as system name and 'i86pc' or
> > 'sun4u' for Intel and Sparc architectures.  This seems to be the
> > same on both Solaris and OpenSolaris.  So we were thinking of using
> > these for the OS and ARCH values.  Is this reasonable for both Solaris
> > and OpenSolaris moving forwards, or should we be using some other
> > more recommended interface?
> >
>
> well, when distinguishing between sparc and x86, it might be better
> to use whatever the python equilivant for "uname -p" is, which should
> return "i386" or "sparc".
>
> the problem with using "i86pc" vs "sun4u" (which is "uname -m") is
> what about sun4v?  (also, what about any other future platforms sparc
> and x86 platforms that have a different "uname -m" identifier.)
>
> > We could set DISTRO="generic" and DISTRO_VERSION to "any", which are
> > codeina's default values if it isn't necessary to differentiate.
> > However, since Solaris and OpenSolaris have different packaging systems
> > I think we might need to set DISTRO to "solaris" or "opensolaris".
> >
> > Is this correct?  Or is it possible and advisable for Fluendo to just
> > provide a single set of Solaris packages and install them in both
> > Solaris and OpenSolaris?  I know Fluendo would prefer this if possible,
> > and avoid having to provide their code in different packaging system
> > formats.
> >
>
> IPS does have backwards compatibility for SRV4 packages, so
> they could just release SRV4 packages for both solaris and opensolaris.
>
> that said, it would be much nicer if they had an IPS repo.  i purchased
> their codecs, so currently i get an email when there is an update to
> them, then i go to their website, download them, and install the update.
> if they had an IPS repo i could subscribe to it and just run the pkg(1)
> command to download and install any new updates.  of course since the
> codecs are not free, this would assume some kind of subscription/login
> authentication between my client and their IPS repo, which afaik is a
> feature not yet available in IPS, but it is in the works.  once it's
> available i'd strongly recommend this approach.  in the meantime i'm
> surviving with the SRV4 compatibility.  ;)
>
> > Assuming that isn't possible, and they need to provide different
> > styles of packages for Solaris versus OpenSolaris, then what is the
> > recommended interface to use to identify whether the codeina client is
> > running on Solaris versus OpenSolaris?
> >
>
> i'm not sure this distinction needs to be made.  afaik, for all
> the subsystems that fluendo should be dependant on, both solaris and
> opensolaris will be delivering the same binaries in the same locations.
> so they should be able to compile one set of binaries for use on both
> platforms.  the only difference would be in the packaging.
>
> > Any advise would be appreciated.  It would be good to get the
> > Fluendo codeina server/client set up properly now and avoid problems
> > in the future.  Then users will be able to download useful media
> > and popular codecs from the Fluendo webstore via codeina easily.
> >
> > Note that Fluendo hopes to have MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 decoder codecs
> > available for sale for Solaris by the end of the year.  So that's
> > exciting news.
> >
>
> woot!  :)
> ed
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