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

[kabi]

2007/2/14, Uoti Urpala <uoti.urpala at pp1.inet.fi>:
>
> On Tue, 2007-02-13 at 15:12 +0100, Luca Barbato wrote:
> > I don't know the other distribution or the other people, usually you
> > check the configure script and the readme to write the deplist, not just
> > random usage of ldd...
>
> The default for Debian is to generate (binary) shared library
> dependencies based on what the binaries actually link to. If you're only
> familiar with source package build dependencies from Gentoo then those
> are created by hand.
>
> Generating the dependencies automatically allows updating "libfoo-devel"
> packages as long as the API stays backwards-compatible even if the ABI
> changes. When you rebuild the application source package with the
> updated libfoo-devel the resulting binary package will automatically
> depend on the correct library version; hardcoded library dependencies
> would fail.



As a debian maintainer  - I  was the one who added dlopen support to
ffmpeg - mainly because of legaltity reasons - you can't really distrubute
mp3 & ac3 decoding libraries and refuse to pay $10000 to some idiots
who thinks they deserve this money.

The second reason is also the crazy dependency list.

So for me - I prefer that each externaly used library support boht methods
(and as can be seen in a52 or faad library - it easy to do & maintain
and doesn't slow anything)

Hopefully I'll get to do point where I can start to work on ffmpeg
more frequently again.

Kabi