[MPlayer-dev-eng] FFmpeg, svn:externals and where to go from here

[Diego Biurrun]

The FFmpeg Subversion repository has been set readonly, we will not be
receiving any more updates from it.  The time has come to rethink the
MPlayer project structure and the way we handle external libraries that
we pull into our source tree.

I'm undecided what to do with FFmpeg.  I'd personally move towards
eliminating embedded library copies, but not everybody agrees.  I will
rev my patches for running staged configures and reusing the FFmpeg
build system more instead of duplicating it badly when I find the time.

Then there is libdvdread and libdvdnav.  There are many shared devs, but
the project is not under our direct control and we don't know if there
will be a git migration or not.

libdvdread/libdvdnav sees orders of magnitude less changes than FFmpeg.
IIRC (but please don't take my word for it and doublecheck) current
versions are widely available in distributions now.

I would suggest just dropping the svn:externals and using system versions
of these libraries.  The value added by the embedded copies is small, but
the complication is considerable due to the ties to infrastructure of
projects that are separate from MPlayer.

Diego