[FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH] Add WebM to the Matroska demuxer name

[Alex Converse]

2010/7/15 M?ns Rullg?rd <mans at mansr.com>:
> Baptiste Coudurier <baptiste.coudurier at gmail.com> writes:
>
>> On 07/15/2010 10:32 AM, M?ns Rullg?rd wrote:
>>> Reimar D?ffinger<Reimar.Doeffinger at gmx.de> ?writes:
>>>
>>>> On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 01:58:58AM -0400, Alex Converse wrote:
>>>>> $subj
>>>>>
>>>>> Some users are getting confused. We do a similar thing for
>>>>> "mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2."
>>>>
>>>> And I've always considered it a bad idea.
>>>> Changing this field means the value you need to use for -f changes
>>>> (and MPlayer actually also relies on this name), so strictly speaking
>>>> this would require a major version bump.
>>>
>>> -f matroska,webm would be nothing short of ridiculous.
>>
>> WTF, for demuxers, values are matched between commas. Mans, you even
>> reviewed that patch.
>
> I forgot about that, and now I come to think it was probably not such
> a good idea. ?It will break any application which enumerates the
> demuxers and does something with the name, and as such this should be
> considered an ABI break.
>

That strikes me as ABI abuse. *av_find_input_format() still works. You
could make the same argument about longnames. Where do we guarantee
that short name lists won't grow. I don't see anything in the doxy or
any other annotation treating shortnames and long names differently in
any ABI regard.

> The correct solution is to make that field a proper array like we have
> for some other properties. ?To avoid breaking ABI, we could even add
> a list of aliases at the end of the struct. ?The single name field
> could be dropped at the next big break if we want to.
>

I don't see how a proper array is better than a comma delimited list
for these purposes

--Alex