[vlc-devel] Rethinking the contribs

[Pierre Ynard]

> I might (or not) have time and/or use for the contribs. Unfortunately,
> the state of contribs is rather disastrous at the moment, especially
> on Linux.

There's no Linux contrib buildbot, so I guess that doesn't help?

> * We already have 15 distribution files, with more or less arbitrary
> stuff selected in each of them. I find this intractable. There is a
> lot of room for automating the list of stuff to be built, instead of
> relying on the user to select a distribution. This probably requires
> autoconf.

In my experience I had two reasons to use contribs on Linux: packets
whose version was too old in my distribution, and packets that were
absent or crippled for legal reasons. Is it possible to leverage the
existing autoconf rules of VLC? Is it possible to query the package
manager of the distribution and suggest installation of the distribution
packages rather than building them?

> * It is debatable whether this belongs in vlc.git at all, as it is not
> quite following the release cycle of VLC. I mean, we often use the
> "trunk" contrib to compile the "stable branch" VLC...

Agreed. But VLC isn't a packaging system so the process of packaging /
installing / re-using contribs is questionable too. And on the other
hand, having contribs just a cd && ./bootstrap && make away is a nice
feature; won't it affect usability if they're not in the main repo?

Regards,

-- 
Pierre Ynard
"Une âme dans un corps, c'est comme un dessin sur une feuille de papier."