Notes on libdv for Debian
=========================

On the i386 architecture, the shared library version of libdv does not comprise
of position-independent code only. While not desirable in general, this choice
was done on purpose by the upstream developers for some performance critical
routines that contain hand-optimized assembler code. As such, it meets an
exceptio for position-dependent code in shared libraries granted in section
10.2 of Debian policy (version 3.7.2). It was discussed in report #175077 in
the Debian bug tracking system. The difficulties of converting the assembly
part to position-independent code have been discussed on the debian-devel
mailing list in <20030110165246.GC1494@neljae> and follow-ups. In the meantime,
folks over at Gentoo (Mike Frysinger?) have managed to come up with a
working patch that turns the i386 assembly into position-independent code
(cf. http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=121871). As this patch is quite
intrusive, I've opted not to include it in the Debian package for now, and
wait on the upstream developers' opinions instead.

 -- Daniel Kobras <[email protected]>  Tue, 26 Sep 2006 14:21:55 +0200