Main Inclusion Report for libv4l

Requirements

1. Availability: http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/s/libv4l; available for all supported architectures.

2. Rationale:

   • Needed to make various webcams work properly.
     • - The rewrite of the gspca webcam driver was merged to the mainline kernel in 2.6.27 as v4l2. In order to merge it they had to remove the conversion of various manufacturer-specific formats from the driver. The code to convert these formats was moved in to a userspace library so that each application does not have to implement support for them. - Without the library when an app meets one of these formats it will not work. This would mean that many webcams that worked in previous releases would stop working. The applications either need to be patched to use the library, or it can be used with LD_PRELOAD when an app has not been patched.

3. Security:

   • No known CVEs
   • It's a library, so no code running as root.
   • It is not active on the network.
   • It works with an incoming video stream, and attempts to covert it, so it may be vulnerable to corrupted video streams.
   • Any source code review performed ? Yes (Reviewed it quickly, the idea of your webcam attacking you makes me giggle a bit -- Kees)

4. Quality assurance:

   • The package itself cannot be useful unless the applications are patched to use it, or an LD_PRELOAD hack is used.
   • No debconf.
   • No bugs reported in Debian or Ubuntu (new package)
   • The package is in Debian NEW. Ubuntu developers collaborated with Debian on the packaging.

   • Upstream is active.

   • No upstream bug tracker yet.

   • The package deals with the output of many webcams: http://lwn.net/Articles/291036/

   • Is there a test suite in the upstream source or packaging ? No Is it enabled to run in the build ?

5. Standards compliance:

   • FHS, Debian policy, and library packaging guide compliant. Only interesting thing is the 32 bit libs for amd64.
   • Package uses debhelper and quilt.

6. Dependencies:

   • Build-Depends: debhelper (>= 7), quilt, gcc-multilib [amd64] (all in main)

   • No extra depends.

7. Maintenance:

   • How much maintenance is this package likely to need ? Expected to be low.
   • Who is responsible for monitoring the quality of this package and fixing its bugs ? Ubuntu-desktop. lool and kees are involved in the Debian packaging.

8. Background information:

   • The general purpose and context of the package should be clear from the package's debian/control file. If it isn't then please explain.
   • What do upstream call this software ? "libv4l" Has it had different names in the past ? No, though it is confusing that it provides "libv4l2" and "libv4l1", with an major ABI of "0". This confusion has attempted to be addressed with the "-0" ABI suffix on the binary package names.

Reviewers

• lool, kees, james_w

MIR bug: https://launchpad.net/bugs/281377