[FFmpeg-devel] Proposal: Homebrew tap for FFmpeg

Werner Robitza werner.robitza at gmail.com
Thu Feb 7 22:41:50 EET 2019


On Thu, Feb 7, 2019 at 9:29 PM Michael Niedermayer
<michael at niedermayer.cc> wrote:
> I can setup a repo on github and or on git.ffmpeg.org (where ffmpeg-web is)
> https://github.com/FFmpeg/web currently is a mirror of git.ffmpeg.org
> assuming there is consensus that such a thing should be created

GitHub would be preferred since that allows the user to simply run:

brew tap-pin ffmpeg/ffmpeg
brew install ffmpeg

See also: https://docs.brew.sh/How-to-Create-and-Maintain-a-Tap

> Its important that someone maintains this though, that is for example
> someone needs to take care of reported bugs.

Yes, that is absolutely clear. I think that bugs will reflect either
general build errors that should be discussed here or posted on trac,
or bugs in third party libraries (e.g., x265 breaking an ffmpeg
build), or those which are related to Homebrew, which should be posted
on their issue tracker.

> It was not mentioned in this thread but i think it should be clear that
> if this ends up not being maintained (well) then we should remove it again.

That would be the best solution, rather than providing something that
doesn't work (well).

> Also we should aim toward having a good relation with everyone who
> maintains a different solution.
> The way i see it this is being created out of a technical need (the
> removial of easy user configuration support)
> Iam just saying this as ffmpeg-devel has sometimes been a bit toxic.
> I think we should make double sure this does not degenerate into some
> sort of hostile fork ...

The idea would really be to to provide a clean formula the way it was
before Homebrew removed all the options. This would also reflect what
we're recommending people to do in the compilation guides
(https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/CompilationGuide/).

The good thing about taps is that everyone can create a formula for
their own needs, and it is my understanding that people may want to
keep a formula that installs all dependencies by default, or have some
special build flags. So I don't see a potential issue with "hostile
forks".

> and i probably should also say that i do not know exactly who maintains
> which alternative where ...

Until now, not many, since there was no real need for it. Now this
need has suddenly come up, hence my initiative to provide a single
good source rather than having users do a web search for whatever
formula might work.

Thanks for your thoughts – good points.

Werner


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