QtMultimedia module missing from python-qt4

[Luper Rouch]

Binary package hint: python-qt4

The QtMultimedia module was recently added to PyQt.

It is missing in the python-qt4 install rule, and therefore is not installed by that package.

Attached is a patch that fixes this, tested on ubuntu lucid.

[Richard Griswold (richgriswold)]

I checked https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/python-qt4 to see if QtMultimedia was in the Maverick and Natty packages, but it is missing from them as well, and the Natty package was uploaded only a week ago. Since I use QtMultimedia in a python app I'm writing, I had to build PyQt from scratch to get this module, which caused problems when I tried to upgrade from Lucid to Maverick. That's straightened out now, so the upgrade is proceeding, but now I'll have to rebuild PyQt again. Is there any hope of getting QtMultimedia in the mainstream package?

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

Looks easy enough at a glance. I'll see about getting it into Natty. I'm not sure what we can do about Maverick at this point. I'll look into that too.

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

I tried to build this with Qt 4.7, but it doesn't provide QtMultimedia anymore, so I'm not sure how best to address this. I suspect when you rebuilt it locally you still have the Qt 4.6 QtMultimedia installed.

dh_install: python-qt4 missing files (usr/lib/python*/*-packages/PyQt4/QtMultimedia.so), aborting

[Jonathan Thomas (echidnaman)]

This is because Qt moved/renamed the library to QtMultimediaKit and threw it in with the QtMobility libraries. :/

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

I tried building python-qt4 with the new package to and it failed, so I think some porting to the new module is needed.

[Luper Rouch (luper-rouch)]

QtMultimedia has entirely been moved to QtMobility as explained in this post:

http://labs.qt.nokia.com/2010/05/06/qt-47-scope-change-regarding-qt-multimedia/

So I don't think this bug is relevant at all after Lucid. Maybe the fixed python-qt4 for Qt 4.6 should live in a PPA for those that need it ?

[Michał Dutkiewicz (emdek)]

> This is because Qt moved/renamed the library to QtMultimediaKit and threw it in with the QtMobility libraries. :/

No, they didn't.
This is done for 5.x, not 4.x, what was added is still there.
So this is valid bug, Ubuntu should include this module old way, as that one in Mobility package is something different, linking is very different etc.
It just breaks things and is inconsistent with other distributions.
Because of that I'm forced to use Phonon as I can't use unstable Mobility which has very limited adoption.

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

No. It was done for Qt 4.7. See http://labs.qt.nokia.com/2010/05/06/qt-47-scope-change-regarding-qt-multimedia/

I did try adding QtMobility to the build and python-qt4 still can't find the headers and build the module you want. It's a non-trivial bit of work to sort out. Additionally, since qtmobility is in Universe, it would have to be promoted to Main which takes some work as well.

I'd be willing to work on integrating and getting the reviews done to see if we can get QtMobility in Main, but I don't have time to sort through the packaging issues, someone else would have to volunteer to do that.

[Harald Sitter (apachelogger)]

story:
The thing in question was called QtMultimedia and was part of Qt, then it got split out of Qt and moved into QtMobility and renamed to QtMultimediaKit, then it got split out of QtMobility and renamed to QtMultimedia (for Qt 5 only that is).

From the build log of pyqt4 that I saw some time ago I gather that it is trying to use QtMultimedia (Qt 4), whereas we and current upstream only has QtMultimediaKit (Qt 4), hence the incompatibility. To my knowledge everything except namespace/include paths should be upwards compatible from QtMM to QtMMK, so getting this to build should be a matter of s/QtMultimedia/QtMultimediaKit. Additionally the generated python module probably also should be named QtMultimediaKit (as to avoid confusing there).

Of course the best solution would be to try find QtMM and build a module for that and also try to find QtMMK and build a module for that. As obviously QtMMK has additional API that was not available in QtMM...

[Iacopo (iac)]

I can import QtMultimedia from PyQt4 (/python 2) under Windows and Mac but not Ubuntu, and from PyQt5 (/python 3) also under Ubuntu. So for me it seems a bug.
Anyway, what should be the fix to use it with PyQt4 (/python 2) on Ubuntu, instead to make 'from PyQt4 import QtMultimedia'?
Thank You.