Incorrect package description (and name) of gst-libav1.0 / gstreamer1.0-libav: Refers to libav even though Ubuntu uses FFmpeg instead of libav

[Daniel van Vugt]

Incorrect package description (and name) of gst-libav1.0 / gstreamer1.0-libav:
Refers to libav even though Ubuntu uses FFmpeg instead of libav:

------------
Package: gstreamer1.0-libav
...
Description: libav plugin for GStreamer
...
 http://www.libav.org/
 http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/
 http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/modules/gst-libav.html
------------

They are distinct projects:
http://libav.org/ <-- Was used in the past
https://ffmpeg.org/ <-- Now used by Ubuntu and Debian

More history:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libav#History

The incorrect wording appears to be directly inherited from upstream:
https://packages.debian.org/experimental/gstreamer1.0-libav

So the package description and names in Ubuntu and in Debian appear to be wrong. They should replace 'libav' with 'ffmpeg' (although confusingly both provide 'libav*' libraries).

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thanks Daniel, could you maybe report the bug to Debian BTS since the changes should be done there as well

[Iain Lane (laney)]

It's what the upstream project is called

  https://cgit.freedesktop.org/gstreamer/gst-libav/

so in that sense it's correct.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Yes, the name libav was taken from the internals of ffmpeg's libav* libraries. If both libav and ffmpeg provide similar such libav* libraries then then project name "gst-libav" is not totally incorrect. Just the existence of a project that is called 'libav' which we actually no longer use is terribly confusing. I blame the people who forked libav from ffmpeg :)

I don't see any immediate need to fix the package/project name. Shorter term just fix the package description text. Longer term if libav the project is properly dead then related downstreams like gst-libav should become gst-ffmpeg (again?).

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

If the package name still contains "libav" then this bug is not fixed.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

It appears the Debian bug was also closed prematurely. Just changing the description is less than half the fix required.