Re: [Gnash-dev] How to support ffmpeg?

[Rob Savoye]

Tomas Groth wrote:


> 1) Include ffmpeg in gnash.
> pros: No more need to support old and outdated versions of ffmpeg. (Wohoo!)
> cons: There might be some IP/patent-issues... We'll need to keep our own
> ffmpeg-tree up to date.

  There are multiple legal issues, which is why we can't do this
approach. To include ffmpeg in Gnash, we'd basically be the ones doing a
ffmpeg release, but it would become Gnash specific. We have similar
problems with Gstreamer, the released versions often don't have the
functionality we need. I've made the mistake of having to support my own
slightly divergent source tree of others people's packages (Tcl, Tk,
Expect), and have regretted it.

> 2) Help the ffmpeg-team to do some periodic releases.
> pros: The whole world will start celebrating, because finally ffmpeg has
> releases! Gnash can require real release versions, instead of svn numbers.
> cons: In the short term it's still the same mess. Helping out with
> ffmpeg-releases is going to require a lot of time! (any volunteer?)

  I think we should do two things. The first is to make sure we can use
the existing installed ffmpeg packages in a new distro, like FC6, Etch,
or Edgy. Maybe we lose some functionality this way, but then we don't
have to worry about ffmpeg. I guess I'd like to be educated on the
differences between the CVS versions of ffmpeg and gstreamer and the
released versions.

  The second is if we truly want to do ffmpeg releases, we need to be
part of the ffmpeg team. For us to do this as outside help I think
wouldn't be appreciated. For Tcl, Tk, and Expect, I wound up having to
join the development teams, and work with them on better releases. This
was effective, but sucked up a huge amount of unplanned time.

   Things get messy since everyone would be required to build our
customized version of these packages from source for every distro, and
the folks that do build packages for distros will wind up trying to
figure our which version of ffmpeg to install...

  I think for folks building Gnash out of CVS, requiring the CVS sources
of a few dependent libraries like ffmpeg is ok, but we can't really do
an official Gnash release until the functionality in those other
libraries are in a standard released package.

        - rob -