[FFmpeg-devel] relative fontconfig path

[Michael Niedermayer]

On Sat, Sep 01, 2012 at 04:14:48PM -0400, Helmut Tessarek wrote:
> On 31.08.12 18:36 , Michael Niedermayer wrote:
> > Iam not sure i understand the problem correctly but if you statically
> > include some libs with ffmpeg and one of these libs doesnt find its
> > configuration files on some platform how is this related to ffmpeg ?
> > we could if that lib supports it allow to force some path via the
> > drawtext options or you could just fix that lib so it finds its
> > configuration files on all platforms that you want to support.
> 
> Maybe I didn't explain it correctly. I'll try again:
> 
> 1) It does not matter, if you link it statically or not.
> 2) It happens on all platforms.
> 3) There is nothing wrong with the lib nor with ffmpeg. It is just bad design.
> 
> This is what happens: You want to include fontconfig with ffmpeg. Therefore
> you have to compile fontconfig or use an installed fontconfig library.
> This fontconfig library uses a hard coded path to search for its config files,
> which you had to define at configure/compile time. (It is either PREFIX/etc or
> the path you specified in --sysconfdir.)
> 
> If you use this library with ffmpeg and use any options in ffmpeg that
> requires the fontconfig library (libass, drawtext), you might end up getting
> an error that libass, drawtext, and thus fontconfig cannot find its
> configuration file.
> 
> To solve this you can set a environment variable FONTCONFIG_PATH, which has to
> be set before starting ffmpeg (or any other program that wants to use
> fontconfig for that matter).
> 
> Setting this env var sucks, especially if you want to distribute ffmpeg as a
> single executable or if you include in within another application.
> Therefore I would like to give ffmpeg the possibility to use a relative path
> to its own location to search for the fontconfig file.
> 
> Do you understand where I am getting at?

I may be misunderstanding but

if you use an installed fontconfig lib it should find its
configuration files, otherwise it isnt correctly installed

or

if you include your own fontconfig lib it has to be configured so
that it will find its config files whereever they might be. Be that
a file you ship with it or a system config file that may be in
different platform specific locations.

I dont see how this is related to ffmpeg, the same issue arrises
with any application that tries to include libfontconfig instead of
using the system installed one

[...]
-- 
Michael     GnuPG fingerprint: 9FF2128B147EF6730BADF133611EC787040B0FAB

Observe your enemies, for they first find out your faults. -- Antisthenes
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