[k3b] Re: Review Request: Prefer growisofs to wodim for DVD/BluRay burning

[Kevin Kofler]

> On May 3, 2011, 8:28 p.m., Michal Malek wrote:
> > The patch looks OK to me. I'll test it and commit it soon.
> 
> Markus Meik Slopianka wrote:
>     While I'm all in favor of deprecating unmaintained software (in this case widim's DVD support) for maintained software, how is that patch do that? According toits own website, growisofs was last updated three years ago.
>     Wouldn't Cdrskin be the better choice? http://libburnia-project.org/

Wow, time passes fast. I didn't realize it's been so long since the last growisofs release. :-(

But still, growisofs still looks like the better choice for DVDs compared to wodim to me. The DVD patch was more than 3 years old when it got merged into wodim more than 4 years ago and it seems to me that it's getting only minimal maintenance, no new features were added AFAICT: no DVD+R DL (which is what prompted the Fedora bug report), no BluRay etc. Unfortunately, cdrkit upstream has resources only for fixing (some) bugs, not adding features, yet the latter is what their DVD support would really need. (It's not that big a problem for CDs because CD standards aren't evolving anymore.)

As for libburnia, I'm not sure it's ready for production use yet. The fact that no distro that I know of defaults to cdrskin as its cdrecord implementation tells me that it's probably not. :-( But it may well be the best long-term plan.


- Kevin


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On April 23, 2011, 1:49 p.m., Kevin Kofler wrote:
> 
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> 
> (Updated April 23, 2011, 1:49 p.m.)
> 
> 
> Review request for K3b.
> 
> 
> Summary
> -------
> 
> K3b 2 defaults to cdrecord for all burning tasks, including DVDs and BluRay
> discs. Unfortunately, it also does this when cdrecord is actually wodim. This
> is a bad idea, because wodim's DVD burning code is not the "ProDVD" code in
> Jörg Schilling's current cdrecord releases, but a much older, buggier and
> basically unmaintained DVD patch. We cannot ship the ProDVD code in wodim
> because of licensing conflicts: That code was never released under the GPL, it
> was relicensed directly from its original proprietary license to the CDDL. But
> wodim is GPLed, and cannot be relicensed to the CDDL, in fact this was the
> whole reason for the fork: Jörg Schilling's cdrecord distributes mixed CDDL and
> GPL code linked together. So the DVD code in wodim is based on an ancient
> experimental community-contributed DVD support patch for cdrecord (from the
> times where ProDVD was entirely proprietary). So it's a bad idea to use wodim
> for DVDs. As for BluRay discs, those aren't currently supported by wodim at
> all; K3b should detect this, but still, it's better to explicitly default to
> growisofs there too, in case wodim grows some experimental BluRay support.
> 
> One concrete known issue with wodim's DVD burning code is that it fails to burn
> dual-layer DVD+Rs: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=610976 . But
> chances are there are many more DVD burning bugs in wodim, which are unlikely
> to get fixed promptly.
> 
> Growisofs, on the other hand, is designed specifically for DVDs and BluRay
> disks, doesn't have licensing issues and has been used successfully for DVDs
> for years (in fact, K3b 1 always used growisofs for DVDs).
> 
> This patch makes K3b default to growisofs for all DVD or BluRay burning tasks
> if cdrecord is actually wodim.
> 
> 
> Diffs
> -----
> 
>   libk3b/jobs/k3bdvdcopyjob.cpp b1a1cf6 
>   libk3b/jobs/k3bmetawriter.cpp 3aa981e 
>   libk3b/projects/datacd/k3bdatajob.cpp 1258d54 
> 
> Diff: http://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/101208/diff
> 
> 
> Testing
> -------
> 
> Awaiting feedback from Fedora users:
> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/k3b-2.0.2-4.fc15
> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/k3b-2.0.2-4.fc14
> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/k3b-2.0.2-4.fc13
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=610976#c26
> 
> I will update the status when we have some testing feedback.
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Kevin
> 
>

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