Bug#1041714: ffmpeg package (dependencies) is enormous

[Sebastian Ramacher <sramacher@debian.org>]

On 2025-03-17 16:53:56 +1100, David Tulloh wrote:
> Following up on this as I ran into it too.
> 
> The dependency on libsdl2 drags in a lot of additional dependencies, like
> libwayland and x11-common. This makes the package unsuitable for a server
> environment.
> 
> libsdl2 and a number of other dependencies are only required for ffplay and
> x11grab.  The compilation instructions at
> https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/CompilationGuide/Ubuntu specifically call out
> not including these for a server environment.
> 
> Would it be possible to split this package into two?
> 
> A new ffplay package would include ffplay and x11grab.  It would depend on
> ffmpeg and the various GUI libraries.

This does not change anything. libavdevice61 also depends on
libsdl2-2.0-0 so except moving binaries around the effective dependency
closure of ffmpeg does not change.

If you have specific requirements and are starved for disk space, you
are probably better off building your own packages satisfying your
specific requirements.

Cheers
-- 
Sebastian Ramacher