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Re: gstreamer1.0-libav - necessary for browsers to play videos?

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On 06/18/2017 07:54 AM, Brian wrote:
> On Sun 18 Jun 2017 at 00:27:29 -0400, Jape Person wrote:
>
>> Apropos of nothing but wishing to supply an explanation to anyone
>> else who might run into the same issue.
>>
>> It is my habit to perform apt update followed by apt full-upgrade
>> every day on my testing systems. I get the impression that this may
>> not be a common practice, but I've been doing this (apt
>> full-upgrade or, earlier on, apt-get dist-upgrade) on a daily basis
>> for years with only rare resulting problems, all of which have been
>> fixed easily.
>>
>> I also routinely run apt --purge autoremove and debfoster to clear
>> out packages that are no longer needed.
>
> All sensible procedures.
>

Good to know. Some of the messages I've read on this list have made me 
wonder if dist-upgrade / full-upgrade is almost dreaded by some users.

>> The recent firefox-esr upgrade resulted in the following output in
>> /var/log/apt/history.log:
>>
>> Start-Date: 2017-06-16  10:15:49 Commandline: apt full-upgrade
>> Install: libjsoncpp1:amd64 (1.7.4-3, automatic) Upgrade:
>> firefox-esr:amd64 (45.9.0esr-1, 52.2.0esr-1~deb9u1) End-Date:
>> 2017-06-16  10:15:54
>>
>> I ran debfoster, and it asked me if I wanted to keep
>> gstreamer1.0-libav. I ran aptitude why gstreamer1.0-libav and got
>> this result:
>>
>> # aptitude why gstreamer1.0-libav i   task-xfce-desktop Recommends
>> libreoffice i A libreoffice       Suggests   gstreamer1.0-libav
>>
>> Hmmm. Looks like there's no reason to keep gstreamer1.0-libav, so I
>> let debfoster remove it.
>
> debfoster (which I do not use) queries whether you should keep a
> package which firefox-esr recommends? deborphan doesn't do this.
>

On my systems:

$ deborphan -Ps --ignore-suggests
main/libs                 gstreamer1.0-libav       optional

Having had to use at least some Windows systems up through the release 
of Vista, I abhor having anything hang around that isn't truly 
necessary. I may be guilty of overdoing it sometimes.

>> Following this, no browser on the three testing systems I have
>> (firefox, epiphany, or qupzilla) would play any kind of video at
>> youtube.com or at any other location.
>
> My main Jessie machine does not install recommended packages; it
> plays youtube clips within firefox-esr.
>

So you don't even install recommends normally? I would have supposed 
(from reading various descriptions of recommends) that this would result 
in significant functional compromise in most packages. Not usually so?

I think it's odd that I always install Recommends but not Suggests, and 
that my browsers won't play video without this particular Suggested package.

>> Following re-installation of gstreamer1.0-libav all browsers were
>> once again able to play videos.
>>
>> I would have thought that aptitude why might have given me a hint
>> about the browsers requiring this package. I've looked to be sure
>> the browsers do, indeed, have all of their depends and recommends
>> installed, and they do. (I do not install suggests as a rule, and I
>> don't use any kind of proprietary codecs or player software. So I
>> am dependent upon the DFSG-compliant software available in the
>> Debian repositories to play any video or audio I'm going to use on
>> these systems.)
>>
>> This is, obviously, not a very serious problem, but it's an
>> interesting one that might bite others as unwary as I. Maybe it's
>> implicated somehow in some of the odd reports we see from
>> time-to-time of someone who can't get a browser to play videos.
>>
>> Worthy of a bug report?
>

As an additional note, I actually run both deborphan (with the -Ps and 
--ignore-suggests options) and debfoster after upgrades / installations 
/ removals. A little OCD, perhaps, but I've seen deborphan and debfoster 
behave slightly differently on these systems -- depending, I'm guessing, 
on how packages and their Depends / Recommends have been installed in 
the first place.

Thanks for your notes, Brian.

JP

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Thread

gstreamer1.0-libav - necessary for browsers to play videos? Jape Person <japers@comcast.net> - 2017-06-18 06:40 +0200
  Re: gstreamer1.0-libav - necessary for browsers to play videos? Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2017-06-18 14:00 +0200
    Re: gstreamer1.0-libav - necessary for browsers to play videos? Jape Person <japers@comcast.net> - 2017-06-18 20:00 +0200
      Re: gstreamer1.0-libav - necessary for browsers to play videos? Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2017-06-19 15:20 +0200
        Re: gstreamer1.0-libav - necessary for browsers to play videos? Jape Person <japers@comcast.net> - 2017-06-19 17:30 +0200

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