Package: libvdpau1 Severity: normal libvdpau exists as a portable way to use VDPAU without depending on any particular vendor's implementation. In particular, libvdpau also supports *optional* use of VDPAU: a program can link to libvdpau, try to use VDPAU, and find out via the VDP_STATUS_NO_IMPLEMENTATION error that no VDPAU support exists.
This seems very similar to requesting an X extension from the X server and finding that it doesn't exist; the client library for that extension shouldn't inherently go in contrib just because the server-side extension support doesn't exist in main yet. As it stands, putting libvdpau1 in contrib makes it impossible for a package in main to compile with optional VDPAU support. I realize that at first glance libvdpau doesn't look particularly useful without a backend implementation. However, libvdpau *exists* to serve precisely two functions: ship the VDPAU headers for applications to build against, and provide functionality to dlopen a VDPAU backend implementation. If applications provided the dlopen functionality themselves, and dlopened the backend library at runtime themselves, that wouldn't make those applications move to contrib, as long as they worked if they didn't find the backend library. libvdpau just wraps this functionality in a small library, and ships it together with header files. Now, if any application built against libvdpau fails to run if it gets VDP_STATUS_NO_IMPLEMENTATION, that might prove a reasonable basis to put that application in contrib until some free VDPAU backend exists. However, any application which has optional VDPAU support and works even if no backend library exists could remain in main. Thus, please move libvdpau1, libvdpau-dev, and libvdpau-doc into main, and change libvdpau1 to Suggests libvdpau-driver. Any package which absolutely needs a libvdpau backend driver and fails without one could add a Depends on libvdpau-driver (and move to contrib). - Josh Triplett -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
