[FFmpeg-user] man ffmpeg absent

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi Ilja
I hope this will clarify some of the advice you've received here.
Most of the people you are talking to are at least amateur software engineers or enthusiasts who are used to compiling software, and who have spent some effort to build a system which allows them to do so. Setting up a system to compile a useful version of ffmpeg is quite an advanced task which is likely to create a lot of subsidiary problems and technical issues.
Normal users should not expect to have to compile software and will generally gain very little benefit from doing so. It is almost certainly not worth compiling ffmpeg from source code just to get the man pages, when the man pages are immediately available online.
What most people think of as "ffmpeg" includes a significant number of externally-provided libraries. If you compile the most basic core parts of ffmpeg, you may not get all of those external libraries, and the result may not be very useful. Adding on all of the external parts involves a significant amount of extra complexity.

ffmpeg and its associated libraries are very powerful and capable of a lot of useful things, but people like to downplay the complexity of compiling from source. It is probably not necessary for you to do it, and it would probably be quite a difficult task.
Phil

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