FFmpeg bundling exception for XBMC

[Ralf Corsepius]

On 02/24/2014 07:20 AM, Ken Dreyer wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> Alex Lancaster recently pointed out that XBMC upstream has completely
> removed the option to use an external FFmpeg.
>
> https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/4005
>
> FFmpeg has been a long ongoing saga with XBMC. The XBMC developers
> develop their own patches to their private FFmpeg fork, and Alex and I
> have had various success or failure over the years with unbundling
> FFmpeg in the past. Unfortunately XBMC has recently taken steps in the
> direction to make this harder, at least for the v13 "Gotham" release.
>
> The summary is that Alex and I need a bundling exception from the RPM
> Fusion developer community in order to keep XBMC in RPM Fusion.
>
> ----------
>
>  From what I can tell, the three reasons that the XBMC developers
> bundle FFmpeg are:

There are 2 strong reasons to not bundle FFMPEG:
* Users (eg. me) rebuild rpmfusion's ffmpeg with options not supported 
by rpmfusion:
=> rpmfusion bundling xbmc's ffmpeg would void this undertaking and 
reduce rpmfusion's usability.

* ffmpeg is quite security sensitive (AFAICT, e.g. Google recently 
reported (IIRC), ca. 1000 bugs, which reportedly were incorporated into 
upstream ffmpeg)
=> XBMC's bundling imposes severe security risks on both XMBC and rpmfusion

That said, I am quite opposed to let rpmfusion bundle ffmpeg and am in 
favor of staying hard for didacitcal, to teach upstream XBMC that their 
undertaking is counterproductive.


Ralf