[MPlayer-users] Why not make an installer?

[The Wanderer]

Attila Kinali wrote:

> On Sun, 21 Dec 2003 21:38:18 +0200 Martin <lagitus at mbnet.fi> wrote:

>> An installer like Loki Games' (also used by Unreal Tournament 2003
>> and some other games) could solve this problem nicely. It could
>> have checkboxes for installing different codecs and display the
>> necessary licenses for each separately. Since better performance is
>> gained when compiling the software oneself, the installer could do
>> that as well. It could have scripts for finding necessary configure
>> paths (like --with-gtk-config) and a field for custom configure
>> flags for more advanced users.
> 
> What's hard about ./configure && make && make install ? Oh right,
> there is no graphical installer showing you nice pics and telling you
> what mplayer can do while compiling. Heck, why would anyone want to
> spend his free time to write something like this when the current
> solution is already good ?

First, I do mostly agree with you, I wouldn't use an installer if
available even if I weren't tracking CVS, and I don't really see the
need for a graphical setup such as you describe. That said:

The problem is more a matter of finding the codecs in the first place,
downloading them, getting them installed in the correct locations to be
detected, getting configure to recognize things which have been
installed in odd locations, and so forth. I had to juggle quite a bit of
that when I was getting things going, though it works fine with the
defaults now.

The only codecs I've had problems with getting are the Real codecs and
the Live.com codecs, which latter I *still* haven't bothered to invest
the effort to get working... but the point is that while configure &&
make && make install is simple enough, the necessary work to get things
to a state where that command sequence alone is enough is frequently
more complicated.

-- 
       The Wanderer

A government exists to serve its citizens, not to control them.