[MPlayer-dev-eng] [PATCH] factorize print_version()

[Uoti Urpala]

On Sun, 2009-01-25 at 19:20 +0100, Reimar Döffinger wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 25, 2009 at 05:03:56PM +0100, Diego Biurrun wrote:
> > Anybody?  I'd still like to commit this.  I'm also open for moving this
> > to an entirely different file.
> 
> Well, I don't consider completely dropping maintenance for mencoder an
> option, and I do consider this code duplication an issue.
> So I am in favour of moving it, even if the file it ends up in may not
> be ideal.

That particular code is not too important one way or another as it's
rather unimportant and doesn't matter for other usage. However I still
see such changes as negative. Leaving the code duplicated does not
"completely drop" maintenance of MEncoder. If you try to apply to the
rationale for removing the duplication to the rest of MEncoder then
there would be quite a few functions you could similarly factor out of
MPlayer and MEncoder, but IMO it's clear that such changes would have a
negative effect overall. MEncoder is clearly _not_ maintained at
anywhere near the same level as MPlayer, even if its maintenance is not
"completely dropped". The more code MPlayer and MEncoder share the
higher the probability that changes to MPlayer are difficult to do
(would require corresponding changes in MEncoder, and possibly be even
harder to do there because of MEncoder being broken in various ways), or
that MEncoder breaks because such changes are done anyway.

IMO the best way to keep encoding functionality would be to start with
something like MPlayer+vo_yuv4mpeg, and add/port support for more of
MEncoder's functionality. That's also easiest to do as long as any
changes do not need to involve code still used by the legacy MEncoder.