Looking to re-open the discussion around libraw/rawkit. Distros (currently Fedora, eventually Ubuntu) are packaging the latest libraw 0.19.x.
I see the raphodo release note regarding newer versions of libraw (breaking python rawkit) and have read through the history from 2017 regarding libraw 0.18 and the rawkit incompatibilities at that time.
Arch is carrying a vendor patch to make libraw 0.19 work (https://git.archlinux.org/svntogit/community.git/tree/trunk/libraw19-support.patch?h=packages/python-rawkit) however Fedora (my preferred distro) is currently broken. I’m looking at a temp workaround in Fedora: either apply the Arch patches locally (since Fedora upstream is unlikely to keep patches like that around) or install libraw 0.18 and use path tricks to get raphodo running for now.
What I’d like to investigate here (or I can move the discussion to launchpad if @damonlynch prefers) is the longer term path forward.
Do we attempt to get photoshell to turn over mantainership?
Should raphodo maintain its own libraw bindings for just the features used?
Is there some better maintained libraw python package that could be used / contributed to instead? I looked through pypi and there are a couple more active (and significantly less mature) projects.
Is there some better path forward that isn’t as obvious (to me) as the above options? Does @damonlynch already have something in the works?
I’m willing to help with some of the coding / distro packaging as time allows. Need a sustainable path forward to begin designing / coding around. Thanks All!
Thanks for providing those links, and for raising attention about it. I was not aware that the project had been abandoned by the original developers. The Arch patch looks comprehensive. Is the person / people who wrote it willing to take over the rawkit project? It seems like they know what they’re doing. If not, can you do it? I definitely have no plans to do so myself! I don’t wish to incorporate rawkit into Rapid Photo Downloader itself, because it’s the wrong home and I don’t have time.
Thank you for the guidance. I’ve reached out to the Arch maintainer to see what is possible. If it comes down to it, I’ll try to get photoshell to let me assist in the maintenance or fork it and attempt to get pypi to allow me to publish.
If it’s necessary for me somehow take over maintainership, updates will be limited to updating bindings for new versions of libraw and reviewing / merging PR’s. My goal is simply to keep Rapid Photo Downloader working as opposed to new feature development.
Thank you for taking this on @mtkunkel. Let me know here when you’re up and running with the fork. I hope the original authors help you with the transition.
Currently in contact with the original rawkit maintainers, it sounds like we should be able to figure something out.
In thoroughly reviewing GitHub - letmaik/rawpy: 📷 RAW image processing for Python, a wrapper for libraw, the maintainer seems to be quite active and the library is better adopted by other downstream projects. Given how little of the raphodo code uses rawkit (thumbnail generation), I may try swapping in rawpy. (need to play around with it first)
The only potential snag is distribution packaging. rawkit is packaged by distros for those installing via pacman/dnf/apt.