[Ffmpeg-devel] [RFC] dlopen vs linking for external libraries

[Uoti Urpala]

On Sun, 2007-02-11 at 20:16 +0000, M?ns Rullg?rd wrote:
> Uoti Urpala <uoti.urpala at pp1.inet.fi> writes:
> > present. They don't cause problems with proper binary packaging systems
> > either (such as Debian) when the system can take care of the
> > dependencies. The only problem case would be trying to distribute
> > binaries without proper packaging.
> 
> I think Michael was complaining about the endless lists of
> dependencies that are typical for binary packages.  Most distros tend
> to enable everything that can possibly be enabled, so you end up with
> many gigabytes of disk space taken up by stuff you never ever use.

On this Debian system /usr/lib is less than a gigabyte and the
whole /usr is about 2.1 GiB. That includes things like OpenOffice.
Ending up with "many gigabytes" of space taken by unnecessary
dependencies alone sounds highly exaggerated.

If the binary distros tried to make features optional and used dlopen()
or created separate packages with enabled/disabled features the
increased complexity would make it a net loss (yes they have considered
that). For a program typically used with video files the space savings
matter even less than for most others.