[MPlayer-dev-eng] .deb of 0.90rc3 release

Wed Jan 22 10:36:55 CET 2003

hi there and thanks for the comments

First, some history.
  ---
In Sep 2001, Dariush filed an "Intent to Package mplayer" for Debian.
 I wished to sponsor. We decided (~1 year ago) to try to put
together a package of mplayer that would be accepted into the
mainstream Debian distribution.

Someone asked: Why bother? 
Because 'mplayer' is an hell of a wonderful program!
With the help of the win32 codecs (that the script 
/usr/share/mplayer/scripts/win32codecs.sh
will automatically download), it plays any kind of movie clip that
I have ever downloaded from Internet (and I have a big collection).

(Someone asked also: why adding mplayer to Debian? It will
always be a crippled version. See (*) below)

So, we read all the licenses and copyrights (Debian is very picky 
about it), we waited until mplayer had runtime CPU detetection, 
and until it had an opensource debugged DivX player; then
we prepared a package, and we proposed it Debian in october.
It was refused, since they asked more clarifications on some
licenses (there are files  with strange copyrights, 
see libvo/vo_md5.c as an example).

So we started again.

I had these priorities in mind:
0) package must comply with Debian Free Software Guideline (DFSG)
  and with Debian policy
1) package must be lintian clean (as much as possible)
2) package should be well designed:  
    debconf configuration
    split documentation 
    split gmplayer
3) package should offer some extras such as:
    automatic codec download
    flexible debian/rules that can be used by users for custom packages
    mencoder and other tools
(and the general rule: keep it simple)

So we asked the authors some clarifications on licenses, (on this list
and personally to authors of some sub-libraries). Now we think that
we have a package that suits 0 and 1, so we proposed it.
We still need to work on 2 and 3.
 ---
End of history.

And here are some  replies.
[most of what I  will say has been already pointed out 
 in some other e-mails, but I still wanted to summarize it]

First of all. The package is made for Debian unstable.
(This I forgot to tell, sorry).

On Tue, Jan 21, 2003 at 08:53:20PM +0100, Arpi wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> > you find them in
> >  http://tonelli.sns.it/pub/mplayer
> 
> just checked the binary:
> 
> root at arpi:/demo/mplayer/release/deb/usr/bin# ldd ./mplayer
[snip]
>         /lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40000000)
> 
> nice... eh.
> wtf is this?
> why do you make it depend on so much useless things most users don't have at
> all?

there is an old and unresolved issue here:
 some mantainer prefer to activate all possible libraries and features;
 some other prefer to have a simpler package.

each one has PROs and CONs. (You figure out)

We chose, and we added a lot of Build-depends.
As someone pointed out... they are just libraries, and they are
available in Debian testing.

> or debian comes with all these libs?

yes, Debian comes with all those. Next time, instead of running ldd, try this.
$ dpkg -i mplayer*deb
$ apt-get -f install

If you use Debian 3.0 (a.k.a. Woody):
you should temporarily point /etc/apt/sources to 'testing' or to 'unstable';
otherwise, you may recompile the package from source.

> and why is dvdnav dep there? that code never worked and never will.

Yse, I have just found it out myself (I have just bought a DVD, to
test it, and I see that it does not work). Now I delete it.

> and why does it depend on ncurses and libgpm ?

in debian/control it says
Depends: ${shlibs:Depends},debconf,libconfhelper-perl
so it is automatically added.

I think that the reason is:
 -vo  AAlib   -> Depends: ncurses, libgpm
but I am not sure.

> what is libaudio ?

NAS (network audio systems)

to find out:  dpkg -S libaudio , or use  http://packages.debian.org

> and why don't you use the 'default' (named default) skin with support for
> all gui features? like playbar.

Dariush is preparing two packages, fonts and skins.
(I think that)
He asked for permission to add the skins into Debian as GPL,
and he got an e-mail answer from the author
of 'Neutron', but not from the author of default.
(But I am not sure)

> what about libdvdcss ?

is not in Debian. But 
"libdvdread currently uses libdl to dynamically probe for libdvdcss at
runtime, if found, libdvdcss will be used to decrypt sections of the
DVD as necessary. " . So people who have it will use it 

> and/or libmpdvdkit2?

not in Debian. What is it for? is it better or worse
of other choices?

> why is no mencoder ?
> oh, it's big.

On this, I disagree. The only crippled part is 'mencoder', which is
not built by default, since 'lame' is not in the Debian mainstream.
But the source code will be in Debian.

I plan to do a minor change to debian/rules, so
that users will just need to type
$ apt-get source mplayer
$ apt-get build-dep mplayer
$ cd mplayer-*
$ MPLAYER_TYPE=custom dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -b -us -uc
and the user will have a custom version of the package, without
runtime CPU detection, and with mencoder (if they have lame in
the system).

But this is a low-priority issue. Please wait.

> then why is not gmplayer a separated package? most users don't want
> gui.

low priority issue. But I will fix it ASAP.

> i don't recommend supporting/accepting it as official package...

I am sorry for that. 
Problem is, which other packaging would you propose?
There are only 4 packaging that I am aware of
1) upstream, from CVS or .tar.bz2
2) our (slightly changed) version of the above
3) Marillat's packages
4) thuglife's own packages

3-> are out of questions, since Marillat is not wishing to upload them,
 and they use lame and other libraries which are not in Debian
4-> they need further debugging

so we prepared 2, which is (=hopes to be) just a revision of 1
so that it will be acceptable into Debian.

if is there any improvement/ better choice, please tell

a.

-- 
Andrea Mennucc
 "E' un mondo difficile. Che vita intensa!" (Tonino Carotone)