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

[Reimar Döffinger]

On Wed, Jan 26, 2011 at 07:33:59AM +0100, Reinhard Tartler wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 25, 2011 at 22:32:29 (CET), Reimar Döffinger wrote:
> >> This looks no harder than compiling both MPlayer and FFmpeg to me.
> >
> > Which is double the effort of just compiling MPlayer.
> > However that is not counting the worst: either installing FFmpeg
> > or beating it to be useable without installing.
> 
> What's the problem with installing FFmpeg on Windows? Seriously,
> is there something that can done to make this step easier?

Not Windows-specific really, except that there's not even the
option of using a system one.
The issues are
- additional steps (yet another configure to run, with different
  options which is particularly annoying for cross-compiling)
- non-trivial to start a compile of everything so you can go
  do something else (bigger issue on Linux actually due to
  make install since by default that needs root)
- no reliable make uninstall
- pkg-config usually does not work, so (IIRC) you manually need to convince
  MPlayer to find it

In general just try to make a list of the steps needed
if you want a user to test a patch that changes both FFmpeg and MPlayer.