[Icecast] rfc: bring ices-kh60 into mainline asap

[Joern Nettingsmeier]

hi everyone!


currently, karl's branch of ices has a number of interesting features 
that the ices release does not:

* jack support (very important for a number of users i know, and 
generally cool in terms of interoperability)

* really nice metadata updates and on-the-fly savefile changes

* runner threads for load distribution on smp boxen

* on-the-fly switching of input sources (useful for recorded material 
during pauses in the live programme)

...

the first time i used ices-kh was about a year ago,  and even then it 
has performed very reliably, for over a week in 24/7 operation.
at the time, it relied on a hacked version of libshout, so it was clear 
that it could not easily be merged into the main ices branch without 
major disturbances.

since libshout-2.1 is out, however, it does not require a modified 
version any longer.

a number of ices users (especially those who do live streaming, myself 
included) have been pestering karl to merge his changes, so that even 
casual users can profit from the improvements.[1]

so far, this has not happened, since some of the changes in the -kh 
branch are fundamental.
to speed up the merging, and since there are no regressions in 
functionality when moving from ices-2.0.1 to ices-kh60, why can't we 
just push ices-kh60 out as ices-2.1rc ?

it has been tested by a number of people, and getting the latest 
improvements from mainline into karl's tree might easier than the other 
way round...
from a release manager's pov, this might be questionable, but given the 
many alternative stream sources, ices is not a critical single point of 
failure in the xiph infrastructure, and changes in ices do not affect 
any other xiph products.

i hope i'm not stepping on anyone's toes, and i'd really like to hear 
what the ices maintainer has to say about this.

all i can say is, there are many people who really need the features in 
-kh, and it would be beneficial if they became as visible and easily 
available as possible.


keep up the great work!


best regards,


jörn


[1]
as a side note, the whole development process under the xiph umbrella 
can be very hard to follow for outsiders - in addition to the sheer 
volume of the sources, they are also rather scattered over the svn tree. 
the -kh branch is almost invisible on the net, unless you know exactly 
what you are googling for. i don't blame anyone for this, but it is 
another argument for a quick merge.