[FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH] build: Allow libffmpeg to be built for Chromium-based browsers

[James Le Cuirot]

On Sat, 29 Jul 2017 11:40:30 +0200
Nicolas George <george at nsup.org> wrote:

> Le decadi 10 thermidor, an CCXXV, James Le Cuirot a écrit :
> > This Makefile snippet allows libffmpeg to be created without the help
> > of Chromium's build system. It uses the CONFIG_SHARED variable to
> > decide whether to link the FFmpeg libraries statically or
> > dynamically. In the latter case, libffmpeg is just a wrapper with no
> > symbols of its own.  
> 
> I concur with the other remarks: this is not the right approach, and it
> has many flaws.
> 
> But on the other hand, I strongly support the underlying idea: having
> many libraries causes no end of trouble, for users a little but for
> developers mostly. See for example the proliferation of avpriv symbols
> whenever code needs to be factored between libraries but too complex for
> a public API.
> 
> So if you were interested in making this right: make it the default and
> only library for the project, to be applied at / instead of the next
> major bump, I would strongly support it, and help to the extent of my
> ability.

I am merely an end user here so I'm afraid my interest in this only goes
as far as the Chromium use case.

I'm not sure whether it's the default but it actually can be built to
link directly against the individual libraries and this is exactly what
Gentoo's Chromium package does when the system-ffmpeg flag is enabled.

I don't know why Opera and Vivaldi build libffmpeg.so as a separate
component or why Chromium even makes this an option in the first place.
A distro may not have the same library versions available but that
doesn't stop these browsers bundling the individual libraries. Perhaps
it's to make swapping it out easier but then it's just one file instead
of three.

I wasn't too optimistic about this being accepted but the Gentoo FFmpeg
maintainer insisted that I put it forward anyway. Hopefully I can
still convince him to carry the patch, otherwise users like me will
lose out. Several others expressed interest.
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