Audacity is a very high-profile, cross-platform application. As it stands. Audacity has been stagnant at 2.4.2 for several releases. 3.1 has been out for some time and is compatible with ffmpeg 5.
At this point, we are finding our hand forced. 2.4.2 is incompatible with ffmpeg 5, and as such we must upgrade, patch, or remove. Users of Audacity would much rather see an upgrade, as I have seen in bug reports as of late, or in the #ubuntustudio chat.
The biggest hurdles have been the telemetry which can be disabled by default as discussed via https://github.com/audacity/audacity/discussions/889.
Note that the biggest requirement, wxwidgets, only recently got uploaded post-Feature Freeze, which otherwise would have made this FFe moot. This bug has been being worked on since prior to FFe, so IMO this is a bug fix that just happens to carry features with it, similar to what you'd find if wxwidgets had been uploaded prior to Feature Freeze.
Basically, I'm hoping that some of the logic that can be applied here is that the exception is based mostly on the late upload of wxwidgets which was beyond the control of those involved.
I think that having new features in an application is a better option than having it removed completely for the sake of a feature freeze in this case, especially when it's as high-profile of an application as this one.
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Original Description:
https://launchpadlibrarian.net/615233650/buildlog_ubuntu-kinetic-amd64.audacity_2.4.2~dfsg0-5build1_BUILDING.txt.gz
(...)
In file included from /<<PKGBUILDDIR>>/src/AudacityApp.cpp:82:
/<<PKGBUILDDIR>>/src/FFmpeg.h: In constructor ‘AVPacketEx::AVPacketEx()’:
/<<PKGBUILDDIR>>/src/FFmpeg.h:892:21: warning: ‘void av_init_packet(AVPacket*)’ is deprecated [-Wdeprecated-declarations]
892 | av_init_packet(this);
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^~~~~~
In file included from /usr/include/x86_64-linux-gnu/libavcodec/avcodec.h:45,
from /<<PKGBUILDDIR>>/src/FFmpeg.h:53:
/usr/include/x86_64-linux-gnu/libavcodec/packet.h:506:6: note: declared here
506 | void av_init_packet(AVPacket *pkt);
| ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~
/<<PKGBUILDDIR>>/src/FFmpeg.h: In member function ‘void AVPacketEx::reset()’:
/<<PKGBUILDDIR>>/src/FFmpeg.h:919:7: error: ‘av_free_packet’ was not declared in this scope; did you mean ‘av_new_packet’?
919 | av_free_packet(this);
| ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~
| av_new_packet
/<<PKGBUILDDIR>>/src/FFmpeg.h: In member function ‘void AVPacketEx::steal(AVPacketEx&&)’:
/<<PKGBUILDDIR>>/src/FFmpeg.h:926:21: warning: ‘void av_init_packet(AVPacket*)’ is deprecated [-Wdeprecated-declarations]
926 | av_init_packet(&that);
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^~~~~~~
/usr/include/x86_64-linux-gnu/libavcodec/packet.h:506:6: note: declared here
506 | void av_init_packet(AVPacket *pkt);
| ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~
FFmpeg 5.0 changed the API and it required a big patch for audacity:
https://github.com/audacity/audacity/pull/3121/files
Note that patch is on top of master, and Debian/Ubuntu still carry old version 2.4.2. To fix this, the package needs to be first updated to 3.1.3 (or later), and then have that patch applied.
Upstream issue (now resolved): https://github.com/audacity/audacity/issues/2445
Debian RC bug: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1004598
audacity was removed from debian testing today: https://tracker.debian.org/news/1352473/audacity-removed-from-testing/
This is a very high-profile application. Note that it was removed from Testing but not from Unstable. Additionally, it's seeded in Ubuntu Studio. We should do whatever we can to keep it from being removed, including updating it and applying the patch.