On Jan 10, 2014 8:54 AM, "Adrian Bunk" <bunk@stusta.de> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 08:17:45AM +0100, Lorenzo Sutton wrote:
> > Agree with many on at least providing the *option* for users to have
> > the original ffmpeg instead of libav and using sensible clear names
> > and descriptions for both packages.
> >...
> >
> > Without getting into the politics of the fork etc. users should be
> > able to do
> >
> > apt-get install ffmpeg
> >
> > or
> >
> > apr-get install libav
> >...
>
> It is a misconception that making this optional would be a reasonable
> solution - in reality the hassle that would create would is so huge
> that no sane person would want to implement the packaging for something
> like that.
>
> Doing that for local use might not be too hard, but doing it 100%
> correct for a Debian release is simply not feasible.
API/ABI sure is a problem, but please look at how Gentoo and potentially some other distros do that (e.g. Homebrew).
Also in case you don't already know, FFmpeg tries very hard to preserve both backwards and Libav compatibility. And this is essential to packagers.
Timothy