Re: [Gnash-dev] Large movies (was Re: [Gnash-commit] gnash ChangeLog libbase/gstgnashsrc.c libbase/g...)

[Martin Guy]

> On Mon, 15 Jan 2007, Tomas Groth wrote:
> >       * testsuite/movies.all/yapc2006.swf: Removed since it's just too big!

> Since the movie in question has already been in the repository, I will
> put it on the Lulu-hosted site.  We should probably come up with a good
> generic solution, though.

Hi Ann, Yes, that was me last night by proxy, guided by your comments
in the item's submission.

The movie itself is fine and a valuable testcase because at some point
someone needs to address the incredible slowness with which it plays.

The problem is that that single 27M file contributed 75% of the
repository's size, so quadrupled the time for developers to do a cvs
checkout, required diskspace and bandwidth - in my case to about 20
minutes total :-/ Anyone on an acoustic modem would get significantly
older before they could test or start work on gnash! :)

Fortunately, the movie was not required by the automatic testsuite
("make check") and in general I think the cvs repository should only
contain example swf files that are used in the "make check" testrun,
that are known to (or used to) work and that ideally are the smallest
file that will test a specific functionality, for use in regression
tests.

I agree that collections of example swf movies, those that demonstrate
bugs etc need a web presence, but the source code repo is not the best
place for these.

I also feel it would be better if someone administered the collection
(are u able to do this?) rather than having anybody able to
wiki-upload stuff, both to avoid it becoming a library of everybody's
favourite flash movies (valuable as such a thing would be!) as well as
to filter out copyrighted content.

Another web resource that testers need is an http repository of the
latest (or recent) cvs snapshots of the source tree because some
people live behind fascist firewalls and have to access the world via
an http-only proxy that will not allow them to speak cvs without some
ornate ssh-tunnel trickery (I can arrange this for anyone who needs it
- please ask if you need it).

I have started such a repository at
http://freaknet.org/martin/gnash/snapshots but it would be nicer if it
were provided by the project, automatically updated (daily?) and with
its existence documented so that people don't have to ask. That would
also provide a micro-versioning system for people to report bugs
against.

Does that sound reasonable?

   M