mplayer: Avoid interactive prompt from ./configure by doing an explicit FFmpeg checkout

[JessThrysoee]

No description provided.

[MikeMcQuaid]

I'd rather see a solution where you brew the ffmpeg formula. Thoughts?

[JessThrysoee]

At the moment mplayer expects a ffmpeg directory, otherwise ./configure fails. It would probably involve some maintenance to link to an external ffmpeg, is it worth the trouble?

Of course, it would have been nice if a configure option existed to always allow the download instead of the interactive prompt.

[MikeMcQuaid]

Yes, it's worth the trouble. Use ffmpeg if it's already installed or otherwise just use the Formula.brew to download the sources using Homebrew instead.

[JessThrysoee]

A two line formula patch I can manage, but it is way to early in my homebrew career for anything much more than that :-)

BTW, note that the ffmpeg and mplayer brews use different repos, svn://svn.ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg/trunk vs. git://git.videolan.org/ffmpeg.git (there seem to be some fragmentation between the ffmpeg developers http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.video.mplayer.devel/58673/focus=58885).

[MikeMcQuaid]

Look at the Monotone formula, they do something similar.

[JessThrysoee]

FFmpeg needs to actually exist in the source tree; e.g. from ./configure:

test -d ffmpeg/libavutil ||
 die "MPlayer will not compile without libavutil in the source tree."

and it relies on the ffmpeg sources from a specific repo, different from the one used in the ffmpeg brew.

The mplayer FFmpeg will not conflict with the brew FFmpeg because it is linked statically, in fact, if trying to link to shared FFmpeg it warns: "using shared FFmpeg, but static FFmpeg is recommended".

I really think it will be a more stable mplayer if we let upstream handle its tightly coupled relationship with FFmpeg.

[dhess]

I agree 100% with the above comment. Don't mess around with kegs or trying to use the Homebrew-installed ffmpeg. mplayer wants its own version, and there's no guarantee it'll stay in sync with upstream ffmpeg in the future. Homebrew currently offers no easy way to keep two HEAD formulae in sync, anyway.

If the Homebrew formula does try to do something clever, don't expect any help from upstream when things break: I suspect the mplayer devs will ignore support requests and bug reports if they come from a Homebrew formula that monkeys with build.

There's no conflict with Homebrew-installed ffmpeg, as ffmpeg is statically linked into mplayer.

I have a cleaner merge for this fix here: #4599

Let's close this; it's been open for several weeks, and mplayer builds just hang forever as-is!

[adamv]

Dupe of #4599

[dhess]

Thank you!