FFmpeg back in Debian

by
in code on (#2T0F)
More than 3 years ago, January 2011, ffmpeg was forked by a part of the development team into libav. Then, by the end of that year, the fork had replaced FFmpeg in Debian's packages, with, notably, the binary in the ffmpeg package marking itself as deprecated and recommending users to use avconv instead. As the split didn't happen in the most friendly way (to say the least), these events sparkled a lot of debates and flames and it is quite difficult to find articles on the topic that are not biased one way or the other.

In November 2012, a bug report was filed for Debian to reintroduce an actual ffmpeg package and all the associated libraries. Fast forward to mid-September 2014, after some technical discussions and soname changes (all ffmpeg-related libraries with a libav* name have been renamed into libav*-ffmpeg), ffmpeg has been quietly reintroduced in Debian unstable and it might even be just in time to be included for release in Jessie.

Let's hope this solution where both versions can co-exist will help calm things down.

History


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2014-09-30 17:54
FFmpeg back in Debian
bryan@pipedot.org
More than 3 years ago, January 2011, ffmpeg was forked by a part of the development team into libav. Then, by the end of that year, the fork had replaced FFmpeg in Debian's packages, with, notably, the binary in the ffmpeg package marking itself as deprecated and recommending users to use avconv instead. As the split didn't happen in the most friendly way (to say the least), these events sparkled a lot of debates and flames and it is quite difficult to find articles on the topic that are not biased one way or the other.

In November 20123, a bug report was filed for Debian to reintroduce an actual ffmpeg package and all the associated libraries. Fast forward to mid-September 2014, after some technical discussions and soname changes (all ffmpeg-related libraries with a libav* name have been renamed into libav*-ffmpeg), ffmpeg has been quietly reintroduced in Debian unstable and it might even be just in time to be included for release in Jessie.

Let's hope this solution where both versions can co-exist will help calm things down.
Reply 2 comments

Pretty narrow audience (Score: 1)

by evilviper@pipedot.org on 2014-09-30 01:54 (#2T0P)

I'm not sure you'll find anyone that will care, other than developers of the respective projects. One fork being replaced by another nearly-identical fork in one distro... both work fine, and the trivial differences are unlikely noticeable to end users.

Not voting it down, because it's mildly interesting to me, but only because I happen to know several of the people involved. The discussion could turn into an interesting flame-war. While the libav guys had a couple legitimate complaints, I must agree with and confirm most everything gabu (angrily) said: http://lwn.net/Articles/424050/

Re: Pretty narrow audience (Score: 1)

by bryan@pipedot.org on 2014-09-30 02:11 (#2T0Q)

The libav vs ffmpeg argument was to some as big of a religious war as any (emacs vs vi, systemd vs sysv, gnome vs kde)