[Wine] RFC: New dependency on FFmpeg?

Andrew Eikum
Fri, 21 Aug 2015 13:46:12 -0000

On Fri, Aug 21, 2015 at 01:32:35AM -0700, Chris Robinson
wrote:
> FFmpeg doesn't have a particularly stable API or ABI. Dynamically
> linking to it isn't that great of an idea because the .so number
> version increments fairly often requiring at least a relink. The
> audio decode routine is up to avcodec_decode_audio4 by now, and who
> knows when avcodec_decode_audio5 will happen. The deprecated
> functions do eventually get removed and distros can have them
> compiled out.
>
> It's a really good lib if you can require specific versions, and
> either static-link it or ship with the version you build with, but I
> imagine the constantly-breaking ABI would be more of a headache for
> a codebase like Wine unless you directly copy over the code (but
> then, why not just take the decoder routines ffmpeg has and wrap
> them into whatever Windows audio decoder API?).
>

Hmm, okay, thanks. We really only need the WMA decoder. That probably
wouldn't be too hard to pull into Wine, but I was hoping to avoid it
for all the obvious reasons. If it's our best option, though, then
maybe that's what we should do.

Andrew