[MPlayer-users] Why not make an installer?

[Jeremy Brinkley]

On Mon, Dec 22, 2003 at 08:23:54PM +0100, Attila Kinali wrote:
> [Automatic answer: RTFM (read DOCS, FAQ), also read DOCS/bugreports.html]
> On Mon, 22 Dec 2003 15:08:08 +0200
> Ari Huttunen <Ari.Huttunen at f-secure.com> wrote:
> 
> > hat makes this a real problem is that
> > you have to have mp3lame compiled before you compile mplayer for it
> > to work.
> 
> You dont have to, just force mplayer to build lame support
> by using the configure options. (although the build process
> may fail as some stuff might be missing)

Well, if you don't have libmp3lame installed somewhere before you compile
mplayer, what configure options would you specify to force support for it
to be built?  And since libmp3lame.so isn't loaded through a plugin-style
interface (that is, on demand), but by dld (apparently), the build process
most certainly would fail.

No, it would appear to me that in any practical sense mp3lame needs to be
built and installed before mplayer is built. And if it's in a nonstandard
location, a user might be thrown off if they're used to using CFLAGS and
LDFLAGS to control configure. The --with-extraincdir and --with-extralibdir
work just fine for this, though it might be helpful to provide an explicit
--with-libmp3lameinc and --with-libmp3lamelib option. Not required, just
helpful.

I do agree very much with the general point that hiding complexity does no
one any favors. As you pointed out, if it's not as simple as ./configure &&
make && sudo make install then it isn't going to be simple for
GuiConfigurator.class (or whatever) either.

-- 
Reference Librarian
Pulp and Paper Historical Library of Santa Cruz