[FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH] merge libavcore into libavutil

Stefano Sabatini stefano.sabatini-lala
Mon Feb 7 20:34:29 CET 2011


On date Monday 2011-02-07 19:27:26 +0100, Reinhard Tartler encoded:
> It is pretty hopeless that other projects will adopt libavutil alone in
> other projects. With this in mind, nobody is helped by having libavutil
> and libavcore split. In order to ease maintenance and reduce confusion
> where to put common code, avcore's functionality is merged (back) to
> avutil.

Relevant thread:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.video.ffmpeg.devel/112847/focus=114227

Resuming, why libavcore was created? It was created for allowing
non-multimedia libraries applications to use a small libavutil,
separating libavutil and libavcore allows to keep libavutil small
(e.g. if we decide to put DSP/FFT in libavcore).

Use case: hey, I need a small library for {RNG/base64/checksum/CPU
detection/expression evaluation} but I need it to have a small
footprint, what can I use?

I don't know if there are already non-multimedia libs/apps using
libavutil, but that's not the point as it may be useful in the future,
and this use case looks to me not so unlikely so I'd like to support
it.

I see also the reasons for having the lib gone (simplify FFmpeg
layout, reduce complexity in package management), on the other hand I
would like to know if having two separate libs is really increasing
such complexity in a significant way.

Also, removing libavcore will break API/ABI for all users which are
already using libavcore+libavutil, do you still care about not
breaking interface/binary compatibility?

Also there is still the problem of how to resolve
maintainers/committers/developers conflicts, please let's resolve it
before to go through more flames and pointless fights.
-- 
FFmpeg = Frightening & Frenzy Maxi Philosofic Easy Genius



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