[Bf-committers] Upgrading ffmpeg in extern

[Benoit Bolsee]

Hi,
 
During last meeting, I proposed my help to upgrade ffmpeg to version 0.5
now that some kind of stable release is available. So far I have
successfully upgraded ffmpeg in Windows, building new DLL and changing
the source code for the API changes (very few changes fortunately). 
I was going to upgrade in Linux when I stumbled on the inextricable mess
in the Sconscript of the associated codec libraries: x264, xvidcore and
libmp3lame. 
 
During the Windows upgrade, I decided to upgrade also those codecs just
in case some bugs were fixed in them or in case some API change would
make the old library incompatible with ffmpeg 0.5. While the Windows
upgrade was just boring but not difficult, the Linux upgrade was so
difficult that it went far beyond my motivation: the Sconscript for
these libraries are playing the dangerous game of assuming certain
syntax, certain directory structure, certain naming convention in the
makefiles which are not at all preserved in the newer versions of these
packages.
At this moment I've given up upgrading those libraries and I just hope
that ffmpeg 0.5 will be happy to work with the current versions in
extern. Unfortunately I cannot proceed with the ffmpeg upgrade for the
moment because the ffmpeg.org site is down.
 
After this failure I'm asking 3 questions:
1) Why can't we work with external dependencies for these 3 codec
libraries?
2) If it is not desirable for some reason, why can't we work with
pre-built libraries just like in Windows: have the binaries and the
headers in lib/linux2/x264 ...
3) If again it is not desirable for some reason, why can't Scons just
implement the standard build procedure for these packages:
configure/make/make install. Having the Sconscript running the configure
script, then extracting the package parameters from the makefiles to
finally build the packages according to Scons paradigm seems total
madness to me.
 
Maybe I'm touching a sensitive subject here but I wanted to express my
perplexity.
 
Regards,
Benoit
 
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