Is this a sign for things to come? [XMMS Removal]

Dralnu · Veteran Joined: 24 May 2006 Posts: 1919

Ok, as alot of people know: XMMS is going down the drain, supposedly for having ~30 bugs, and that there is no upstream, and that it is old and crappy. The reason I could see: Some dev bitched, moaned, and complained until it was decided to remove it.

Now, as we all know, XMMS works, and works very well. I keep it running 24/7 on a workspace along side Gaim, where nothing else is. Many others have said that this has seriously broken their systems (or their systems are teetering), but it seems the devs don't give a shit (which honestly seems like a standard reply these days).

What is next? There are thousands of apps in Portage that are buggy, but yet they remove the one that has been a staple of Linux installs for ages. I've only heard of one player that could border on XMMS's greatness, that being mpd (which I still havn't quite worked on fixing up yet), and it doesn't seem to quite match up with the ease that is XMMS.

But what is next, I wonder. Someone going to get KDE removed because its buggy? Gnome because it restricts the user? What is next? Will it be YOUR favorite application?
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StringCheesian · l33t Joined: 21 Oct 2003 Posts: 887

arpunk · n00b Joined: 13 Jun 2006 Posts: 61 Location: Colombia

Its not a big deal, if you still want XMMS then keep it on a local overlay or download the tarball and compile it. XMMS is no longer being developed, it has too many bugs and no one wants to mantain it, so it seems a good idea to remove it from portage. Its not the fact that the app is buggy, is that no one else wants to mantain it, and its pointless to keep working with XMMS when they are a lot of XMMS alike apps (and XMMS2 developent too) as far as i see it.

Dralnu · Veteran Joined: 24 May 2006 Posts: 1919

nenolod · Posted: Fri Oct 27, 2006 1:27 am Post subject:

Ok, let me be blunt here.

Gentoo gives YOU, yes YOU, the power to decide.

If you want to keep XMMS, then rescue it to /usr/local/portage. This isn't rocket science, there is no reason to get angry or upset. You are the person in control, and NOBODY is taking away your ability to use XMMS.

If they keyword, YOU unkeyword it.
If they mask, YOU unmask it.
If they delete it, YOU copy it into /usr/local/portage and get on with your life.

This is NOT hard, and only a LITTLE inconvenient at best.

The ONLY thing that is occuring is that Gentoo will no longer supply ebuilds for a package that is in their eyes broken.

Sheesh.

Dralnu · Veteran Joined: 24 May 2006 Posts: 1919

Dralnu · Veteran Joined: 24 May 2006 Posts: 1919

nenolod · Posted: Fri Oct 27, 2006 1:41 am Post subject:

arpunk · n00b Joined: 13 Jun 2006 Posts: 61 Location: Colombia

timeBandit · Posted: Fri Oct 27, 2006 1:51 am Post subject:

Amid all the crying, moaning and hand-wringing over the demise of XMMS, what's the real impact of ripping it from the portage tree?

Answer: Not bloody much.

No, really. If you love XMMS and it's installed on your system, leave it alone. Stop screwing with it. It's old, it's buggy, it's being abandoned in favor of XMMS2--but so what? Until XMMS2 matures to your particular liking, just leave your working XMMS copy be. There are several ways to tell portage to do so.

Maintaining XMMS in portage doesn't mean maintaining just XMMS. It also means, potentially, futzing with XMMS for every change to every package that depends on, interacts with or is depended upon by XMMS. That is why it's beyond a huge pain to "just leave it around" until XMMS2 matures, even if Gentoo chose to ignore upstream from now on.

As others have noted, gone from portage doesn't mean GONE. You can unmerge the Gentoo-ed package, download a tarball, follow the install instructions and build the thing yourself, like any other FOSS package. It's Linux and FOSS, for Pete's sake. There are simple options other than portage.

Developers are mostly just ordinary hackers donating their time to maintain a distro for us. There are over 11,000 packages in the portage tree. There are somewhat fewer than 11,000 developers. It's rather ungrateful to complain rudely when they decide their time is used up or being wasted. Complain politely, fine. But as the Rolling Stones said, "You can't always get what you want."

Finally: do you think the maintainer lives under a rock, unaware of XMMS' popularity? All software reaches a point where it becomes too expensive to maintain. Try trusting, or at least respecting rather than vilifying, the people best positioned to recognize when that time has come.
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Headrush · Posted: Fri Oct 27, 2006 2:42 am Post subject:

mikegpitt · Advocate Joined: 22 May 2004 Posts: 3224

I don't understand what all these bugs people are talking about are. Are they bugs related to xmms integration in gentoo?

I assume the bugs must exist, but I have run xmms for years on my desktop without closing it, and have never had one problem with it crashing or not working properly.

Headrush · Posted: Fri Oct 27, 2006 3:26 am Post subject:

egoist · Posted: Fri Oct 27, 2006 4:52 am Post subject:

Past ebuilds are also available from the webcvs, if you ever happen to lose one.

Paapaa · l33t Joined: 14 Aug 2005 Posts: 955 Location: Finland

Yes, I think it is a risk to have unmaintained programs in Portage. Get rid of 'em all!

amne

pa4wdh · l33t Joined: 16 Dec 2005 Posts: 882

Hi,

I don't mind if it's going to be removed or not, but i think the devs could have been a bit more carefull.

Jochi · Posted: Fri Oct 27, 2006 11:31 am Post subject:

I am using XMMS for several Years now, not long ago i decided to integrate the mplayer videoplayer in it and to use it as a playlistmanager for videos.
I never had issues with this program. And as i wantet to have a slim guibased mp3 player under xfce4 on my SGI Octane there was no other option as many programms are hardmasked (gnome is hardmasked) or you have to emerge kde which is not the best idea on this old machine.

I am sorry to hear that this program is not longer alive.
What if the ebuild-maintainer simply masked this program to make you realise that this program is going to leave in future, till xmms-2 is ready?

sorry for my bad english.

cu

Jochen

yngwin

masterdriverz

amne · Posted: Fri Oct 27, 2006 12:18 pm Post subject:

masterdriverz · Posted: Fri Oct 27, 2006 12:21 pm Post subject:

Insanity5902 · Posted: Fri Oct 27, 2006 12:33 pm Post subject:

Why does everyone keep saying to wait until xmms2 comes out, xmms2 is going to be nothing like xmms, compleletely different. IF you want something simliar look at audacious or bmpx, though I am not sure how bmpx works, audacious actually works, it looks the same and it is actively develop, and if I am not mistaken even by some of the same devleopers, they were sick of xmms and it's horrible code and decided to make it better.

Try it, I bet your music still plays the same

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Narnach · Posted: Fri Oct 27, 2006 1:24 pm Post subject:

Today I got kind of surprised when finding out that xmms was hard-masked. But upon reading it is no longer maintained and buggy (for other people, it's always been stable for me) I understand why it has been done. Thanks anyway for maintaining it for as long as you have.

I'm going to give Audacious a try. If I don't like it, I can always just put xmms in my own overlay. No problem.

It's not like the world is going to end because XMMS got masked...
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Icer · Guru Joined: 26 Aug 2003 Posts: 395 Location: @home

I say good riddance. When I started using Gentoo I installed xmms soon after because I didn't know of better audio players. That's one small problem, i.e. people don't know of other similar applications. On the other hand there are so many audio and video players that it might be difficult to choose between them. After reading the forums and trying out amarok I've not looked back at xmms.

If someone wants to read about reasons for removing xmms go to planet Gentoo and read Diego's post about this issue. You dont need to go browse mailing lists. Planet Gentoo is a good place to see what the developers are about to do next.
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