[Pkg-chromium-maint] Bug#580947: chromium-browser from experimental has included h.264 by default?

[Reinhard Tartler]

On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 12:59:12 (CEST), Julian Andres Klode wrote:

> From my point of view, the following needs to be done:
>
>     1) Drop ffmpeg-no-pkgconfig.patch
>         Using the system libraries from ffmpeg together with the
>         headers of a patched and more up2date ffmpeg-mt will always
>         result in trouble.

Okay, I think you mean this patch:

http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~giuseppe-iuculano/chromium-browser/chromium-browser.debian/annotate/head:/debian/patches/ffmpeg-no-pkgconfig.patch

,----[ffmpeg-no-pkgconfig.patch]
| --- a/third_party/ffmpeg/ffmpeg.gyp
| +++ b/third_party/ffmpeg/ffmpeg.gyp
| @@ -767,12 +767,14 @@
|  
|              # Add pkg-config result to include path when use_system_ffmpeg!=0
|              ['use_system_ffmpeg!=0', {
| -              'cflags': [
| -                '<!@(pkg-config --cflags libavcodec libavformat libavutil)',
| +              'include_dirs': [
| +                'source/config',
| +                'source/patched-ffmpeg-mt',
|                ],
|                'direct_dependent_settings': {
| -                'cflags': [
| -                  '<!@(pkg-config --cflags libavcodec libavformat libavutil)',
| +                'include_dirs': [
| +                  'source/config',
| +                  'source/patched-ffmpeg-mt',
|                  ],
|                },
|              }, {  # else use_system_ffmpeg==0, add local copy to include path
`----

AFAIUI, it forces the build to use the headers of the internal ffmpeg
copy instead of using the system headers. Since I do know that chromium's
internal copy of ffmpeg is *not* binary compatible to ffmpeg 0.5 (which
is what debian/squeeze and ubuntu/lucid ship), I can only agree with you
that this patch is a very bad idea from the start.

>     2) Link against the ffmpeg libraries, do not dlopen() them.
>         This will make shlibs work against and makes it possible to
>         binNMU chromium-browser in case of an ABI break in ffmpeg.

I fear that the reason for ffmpeg-no-pkgconfig.patch is that chromium
does not even compile against the system headers. I can imagine that it
could compile with the ffmpeg version I've uploaded to experimental this
weekend (currently in NEW), but I wouldn't bet on it.

FWIW, I'd suggest to just compile, link and use the internal copy of ffmpeg.

-- 
Gruesse/greetings,
Reinhard Tartler, KeyID 945348A4