[Ffmpeg-devel] Using ffmpeg libs in an OSS project is a nightmare

[Michael Niedermayer]

Hi

On Saturday 06 August 2005 00:36, Kenneth Lavrsen wrote:
[...]
> ffmpeg is used very widely. People have ffmpeg installed for other reasons
> than Motion and often they cannot use those MUSEUM releases you have on the
> Sourceforge download site which you make less than once per year and never
> really fully do. The fact that 0.4.9pre1 never became 0.4.9 is rediculous.
>
> As maintainer of a project that depends on libavcodec and libavformat:
> Please make more formal releases! Please make a formal release every time
> you add major new features.
> The packagers such as Livna, AT and Dag - and the debian packagers will
> then take these and package and 99% of the users will use these.
> And I as Motion maintainer will ensure to have my software working against
> the latest release.
> I cannot do that today when the releases are so scarce.
> And if that is too difficult for you to manage - then do the simplest of
> solutions. Take the CVS snapshot from each end of a quarter and give it one
> minor version number higher and upload it on Sourceforge. The daily snaps
> you have now are not manageable. I cannot check daily if Motion no longer
> works because of API changes or severe ffmpeg bugs.
> At least with quarterly releases I could check and fix 4 times a year.
>
> Please change this "latest CVS policy" and help both projects and
> packagers.

well, as diego said, include a ffmpeg snapshot in your application, 
alternatively you could also help improving shared lib libav* support, we 
have internal API version compatibility numbers they just arent part of the 
soname yet as noone cares, people just complain

about releases, even though the number of people who complain is nearly 
unlimited not a single one of them was so far willing to do _any_ work to 
make a new release

[...]
-- 
Michael