[MPlayer-dev-eng] [PATCH] resurrect --enable-theora

[Reimar at mplayerhq.hu]

Hi,
On Tue, Dec 13, 2005 at 01:55:42AM +0100, Aurelien Jacobs wrote:
> Since the last theora configure patch to use pkg-config, --enable-theora
> don't work anymore. In fact, when using --enable-theora, _ld_theora is
> not set at all, which will obviously fail.
> The attached patch restore the old behavior of --enable-theora.
> I plan to apply it soon.

I don't like it too much, but I won't complain. Just a few points:
1) How --enable behaves is not consistent - sometimes it does the
compilation checks regardless (bad idea IMHO), sometimes it sets some
defaults (bad IMHO because it is essentially "random" if it will work or
not) or it sets nothing (bad because it will not work without manual
config.mak editing, though not so bad sine --enable is for developers
who know what they do after all). Here really a policy would be needed.
2) --enable still will break in a lot of cases, e.g. if theora e.g. is
built to link against the X libs (don't know if this will happen with
theora, but there was some encoder library doing this I think). So IMHO
we should not encourage random, clueless use of --enable options

>  if test "$_theora" = yes ; then
>    _def_theora='#define HAVE_OGGTHEORA 1'
>    _codecmodules="libtheora $_codecmodules"
> +  test -z "$_ld_theora" && _ld_theora="-ltheora -logg"

And in theory, of course _ld_theora being an empty string _might_ be
correct in some very weird setups, however unlikely.
Which makes this IMHO a hack.

What really should be done:
1) print a big fat warning when one of the
"evil" enable flags is used.
2) add a configure option that allows to specify extra libs to link
against.

Greetings,
Reimar DÃffinger