Re: Applicant w/ package
On Sun, Nov 04, 2001 at 11:04:19PM +0100, Robert Millan wrote:
> On Sun, 04 Nov 2001 16:26:20 Martin Michlmayr wrote:
> > * Roland Mas <lolando@debian.org> [20011104 16:08]:
> > > Maybe it would be worth listing it on the "can't be packaged" page
> > > at <URL:http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/unable-to-package>?
>
> you must be confused. the patent problems are only affecting the opendivx
> codec. I spoke with the maintainer about this problem, the opendivx codec
> is just not going into the mplayer package. the program itself is GPL
>
> regarding the technical issues, the main problem was that mplayer uses
> higher CPU optimizations on compilation. This can be solved by including
> a part of the sources in the binary package and building them in postinst
> or even by building many mplayer-* packages.
Building in postinst is horrible. You would have to Pre-Depend on gcc
and whatnot. Also you have a silently CPU-specific installation. IMHO
it is *very* bad when software stops working just because you boot your
installation on a different machine, without the user being at fault.
If the user compiled a kernel for a P4 or installed e.g. mplayer-p4 and
it doesn't work on Athlon, then it's the user to blame (for compiling
for a specific type and for choosing a specific package that is
_obviously_ CPU-specific).
The optimal solution, should mplayer make it into Debian, would IMHO be
to have multiple versions of it compiled for specific CPUs and that they
can be installed at the same time (therefore the binaries would have to
have names such as mplayer-p4, mplayer-k7, ...). Under "mplayer" itself
there should be a script which determines the CPU type and then execs
the correct binary (telling the user what package to install if no
matching binary can be found). Voilà, CPU independent installation.
--
Andreas Bombe <bombe@informatik.tu-muenchen.de> DSA key 0x04880A44
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