[FFmpeg-devel] Prioritize static builds and self-compilation over distro packages

[Reimar Döffinger]

On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 01:03:23PM -0700, Timothy Gu wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 11:39 AM, Lou Logan <lou at lrcd.com> wrote:
> > Hi Werner,
> >
> > On Wed, 30 Oct 2013 19:19:28 +0100, Werner Robitza wrote:
> >
> >> The Ubuntu PPAs are out of date, and I suppose the same holds true for
> >> Debian and Red Hat.
> >
> > We could add a note indicating that these are old or using old branches.
> > Or maybe they should be removed completely.
> 
> Actually Jon's PPA have the newest version of ffmpeg in 0.10 branch. I
> guess the reason he used the outdated branch is for the compatibility
> for Libav. (Curse Debian for not using the newest release branch, and
> curse apps for using the old API.)
> 
> I have a new Debian toolchain for ffmpeg based on libav
> 0.8.7-1ubuntu1. Maybe this will interest somebody. One thing about
> that is that it uses 0.10 branch, because I cannot escape the problem
> of incompatibility. That said it is practically the same as Jon's.
> Maybe someone can extended it to build Git snapshot static builds.
> https://github.com/TimothyGu/ffmpeg-debian/tree/raring

I never got around to actually doing it, but note you don't need
to build static.
You can use -Wl,rpath to install all the libraries into e.g.
/usr/lib/ffmpeg.
This has the advantage that it would allow other PPAs to pull
these in if they want to use FFmpeg "latest".
By adding the rpath setting to our pkg-config files it could be fully automatic
even.
I doubt I'll have time to actually implement it, but if someone
is interested in doing this and only needs a helping hand and/or
tips on the technical details I'm happy to help.
Note: I freely admit that it's not sure this will really work out
as well as I'd hope, it just sounds like a nice idea so far.