[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Bug#402772: bug 402772: downgrade mplayer bug 395252 (for including mplayer in etch)



Steve Langasek ha scritto:
> There is a middle ground here, which is mplayer statically linking
> against the common ffmpeg package; I think that would be a reasonable
> compromise, and I'd like to know if there are reasons this too isn't
> achievable for etch.  There may be known reasons, of course -- it's just not
> clear to me which of the reasons for not dynamically linking also apply to
> statically linking, and whether the issues with static linking might be
> surmountable.

"statically linking with external ffmpeg" (StaLEF) is another option I
investigated; I did not report my investigation to  avoid adding too
much other noise to the discussion

StaLEF is in principle a very nice compromise : it does not make i386
slower; at the same time , it does relieve the security (who just need a
bin-nmu, if ffmpeg is ever changed)

the only (small) drawback of StaLEF is that there is no easy 'configure'
option to do that: you cannot just './configure --slef && make' -  it
requires some  hacking

lets come to today

today, the ffmpeg inside Debian is 6 months older then the one in
MPlayer; for that reason , DynLEF  fails . When I tried it,
I also tried 'make -k' , to see if there were few failures that I could
fix; but the number of errors is too much .

lets investigate why it fails

Those errors are due to the fact that , in the older-debian-ffmpeg,
headers and code are simply too different .

One problem I saw is that many 'defines' are missing. So I should
'backport' all the defines in a special file, and include. And, of
course, check that they have the same meaning (or, any meaning at all)
in the older ffmpeg.

Another problem is  that debian-ffmpeg does not package a library for
the swscale subtree : so if you try to link mplayer with debian-ffmpeg ,
you actually are linking the new swscale to the old
'postprocess/libavcoded/libavformat' lib, and this is a complete mess.


All of the above will make no difference if you try to StaLEF instead of
DynLEF to the older debian-ffmpeg : it is a problem of semantic of the
calls, and too many cross

> Now it's probably not reasonable to require shared linking for mplayer as a
> release-critical requirement, especially when there are known problems with
> that approach 

ffmpeg is developed inside MPlayer ; for that reason, they (correctly)
feel free to improve it in any way they like. This is clearly stated in
the web pages of ffmpeg: no stable api, sorry.

 MPlayer people are also free to cross-link the two codes: this is
AFAICT why  DynLEF does disable some features.

For the same reason, though, StaLEF will need some scrutiny : for
example, I cannot just go into the configure script and hack a few lines
to do DynLEF, but then end with static linking: this would still
disables all features aforementioned.

---

all of the above, of course, to the best of my today knowledge

---

conclusion: StaLEF and DynLEF may be done, but it needs time and help;
unfortunately, I had few of the former and I did not get any of the latter

> Thanks,

thank you for the interest

a.

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature


Reply to: