[asterisk-dev] Asterisk and distributions (Debian, Fedora, etc)

[Daniel Pocock]

On 14/11/12 23:56, Tzafrir Cohen wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 02:47:47PM -0500, Russell Bryant wrote:
>   
>> On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 2:42 PM, Tzafrir Cohen <tzafrir.cohen at xorcom.com>wrote:
>>
>>     
>>> On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 08:24:08PM +0100, Olle E. Johansson wrote:
>>>
>>>       
>>>> Remember that we've embedded a Berkeley DB for years...
>>>>         
>>> Right. It's worth noting that Asterisk 11 removed almost all previous
>>> dependencies on embedded libraries (db, editline, and such). There's
>>> mxml in menuselect, but it's only used at build time.
>>>
>>>       
>> And the db code was removed back in Asterisk 10.  The project has been
>> slowly improving in this regard (though Asterisk 11 took a large step
>> backwards, unfortunately).
>>
>> There are still some other cases that ideally would not be in the tree:
>>
>> res/pjproject
>> codecs/g722
>> codecs/gsm
>>     
> Can use a system library.
>
>   
>> codecs/ilbc
>>     
> Can use a system library, once it is packaged.
>   

For g722, gsm, ilbc and potentially other codecs: it may be worthwhile
to make a system-wide abstraction layer for codecs (I'm not sure if
gstreamer may provide such an API already) so that

a) codec packages can support a single API and be used by multiple
applications (Asterisk, softphones, etc)

b) applications can use the single API, and benefit from any codec on
the system

Particularly with (b), this would mean people could buy a Digium G.729
license and use it not just with Asterisk, but also with their GPL free
softphone or anything else - because such softphones can't possibly have
patented code embedded.