[FFmpeg-devel] Prioritize static builds and self-compilation over distro packages

Werner Robitza werner.robitza at gmail.com
Wed Oct 30 19:19:28 CET 2013


>From my experience with troubleshooting ffmpeg end user problems it
often turns out that users have terribly outdated versions installed.
Not even mentioning the avconv/ffmpeg mess on Ubuntu 12.04 and
derivates, one of the problems I see is that the FFmpeg download page
itself advertises outdated distro packages over compiling yourself or
just getting a static build.
The Ubuntu PPAs are out of date, and I suppose the same holds true for
Debian and Red Hat.

The problem is that the old versions really don't work that nicely.

Also, the download page does not explicitly mention compiling yourself
as a viable option. Granted, ffmpeg is a power user tool as well and
many people know you could download the source and hack away, but to
many end users, this is not clear.

My request – or at least the start of a discussion: Would it be possible to:

- feature the static builds more prominently (move the repo sources a bit)
- mention that compiling FFmpeg is easy (and link to the compilation
guides on Trac)

For example:

"You can retrieve the source code through the standard Git client by
using the command: … You can then easily compile FFmpeg by following
the compilation guides on the FFmpeg Wiki."

"Static builds are available at: … They are snapshots of recent FFmpeg
versions and should be preferred over distribution packages …" (or
something)

Yay or nay?


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