FS#21934 - [vlc] Split vlc into libvlc and vlc

Attached to Project: Arch Linux
Opened by Mitchell Richters (mjr4077au) - Tuesday, 30 November 2010, 11:51 GMT
Last edited by Levente Polyak (anthraxx) - Friday, 23 February 2018, 13:24 GMT
Task Type Feature Request
Category Packages: Extra
Status Closed
Assigned To Levente Polyak (anthraxx)
Architecture All
Severity Low
Priority Normal
Reported Version
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 12
Private No

Details

Description:

I use vlc as a backend for Phonon, but don't require the front-end. Is it possible to split the package?
This task depends upon

Closed by  Levente Polyak (anthraxx)
Friday, 23 February 2018, 13:24 GMT
Reason for closing:  Won't implement
Additional comments about closing:  wont happen with 3.0, its qt5 now so no legacy qt4 and there is nothing but qt things depending on libvlc plus libvlc is useless without all its plugins anyway. not worth the hassle from maintainer pov
Comment by Ionut Biru (wonder) - Tuesday, 30 November 2010, 12:48 GMT
did you tried to split this into libvlc and vlc to see if it works?

i just tried using vlc-plugin with only libvlc and it requires plugins that are available in vlc to work.

here is some packages to try. i have a clue that this split is useless.

http://pkgbuild.com/~ioni/vlc

1) test if phonon builds only with libvlc installed
2) test if phonon works with only libvlc installed
Comment by Mitchell Richters (mjr4077au) - Tuesday, 30 November 2010, 12:53 GMT
To be honest Wonder, I'm not skilled enough to make my own PKGBUILDs yet :(.

I haven't tried those packages yet, but maybe it wasn't working because the dependencies that are in the vlc package should be in the libvlc package?
Comment by Ionut Biru (wonder) - Tuesday, 30 November 2010, 12:56 GMT
not really, it tries to open the plugins which provides support for video formats

http://pastie.org/1335157

i was looking at how ubuntu does it and it seems it doesn't include any plugins in libvlc and phonon vlc backend has vlc as dependency.
Comment by Mitchell Richters (mjr4077au) - Tuesday, 30 November 2010, 13:05 GMT
I didn't look into Ubuntu, but I did look at Deb Squeeze: "http://packages.debian.org/testing/phonon-backend-vlc"

They've got the package split in a lot of ways: "vlc-data", "libvlccore4", "libvlc5", "vlc", "vlc-data" etc. What a nightmare!
Comment by Mitchell Richters (mjr4077au) - Tuesday, 30 November 2010, 13:08 GMT
It should definitely be possible according to the VideoLAN wiki: "http://wiki.videolan.org/Libvlc"
Comment by Ionut Biru (wonder) - Tuesday, 30 November 2010, 13:31 GMT
lets postponed this. i was talking with vlc devs today and they suggested to pack libvlc+modules and gui(which is vlc).

since you have already qt, it doesn't cut your dependencies at all and is complicating packaging.
Comment by Mitchell Richters (mjr4077au) - Tuesday, 30 November 2010, 21:27 GMT
That's ok. I thought it might have been an easy thing but if it's too difficult, it's no issue :).
Comment by Bruno Pagani (ArchangeGabriel) - Monday, 25 January 2016, 14:05 GMT
  • Field changed: Percent Complete (100% → 0%)
cantata 2.0 now depends on libvlc.so.5. I’m not sure whether it could be build and works with only it (and this file own dependencies), but I think so according to cantata README. It would be very nice not to pull vlc and all its dependencies if all what is needed is just that library.
Comment by James Kittsmiller (AJSlye) - Tuesday, 06 September 2016, 08:38 GMT
EFL has now merged emotion generic players into it.
Emotion generic players requires vlc to be used as a back end for apps (terminology, rage), and just like phonon-vlc the gui isn't necessary.
It would be nice to have efl as well as phonon-vlc and others, to be packaged without requiring the end user to have the vlc gui (which in turn requires qt) to be installed on their systems as well.
Ubuntu (debian), mageia, suse, rpmfusion (fedora, centos, etc.), and others, all have split up packages for vlc, IMHO I think we should as well.
Comment by Maispasque (fassil) - Tuesday, 06 September 2016, 08:58 GMT
I totally agree with AJSlye just because i don't really like Vlc even if i use qt for other things !
Comment by Antonio Rojas (arojas) - Tuesday, 06 September 2016, 09:18 GMT
vlc doesn't require Qt anymore
Comment by James Kittsmiller (AJSlye) - Tuesday, 06 September 2016, 09:22 GMT
No but the GUI does, and making qt an optional depend is not an ideal solution either.
When you install VLC the menu entry for the gui is created, and without QT installed it crashes (doesn't load).
Not very user friendly IMHO.
Comment by Götz (goetzc) - Saturday, 28 October 2017, 18:55 GMT
I would also like to see a splitted VLC and libvlc package. There are currently some packages that depend on VLC as a library, but the whole VLC is pulled when installing, for example: cantata, kaffeine, phonon-qt4-vlc and phonon-qt5-vlc, only considering the official package and not AUR packages.
Comment by Levente Polyak (anthraxx) - Thursday, 22 February 2018, 13:25 GMT
They still mostly require VLC decoder and other plugins/engines and for sure i wont split out every single plugin into a own optional dependency.
so the only thing that makes sense to split out is vlc binary itself and only for the reason that QT is automatically pulled in via hard-dependency for it.
Comment by Antonio Rojas (arojas) - Thursday, 22 February 2018, 13:42 GMT
Note that everything in our repos that depends on libvlc (except for phonon-qt4, which will be gone soon) also depends on Qt5, so this won't be as important once VLC uses Qt5.
Comment by Levente Polyak (anthraxx) - Thursday, 22 February 2018, 13:54 GMT
VLC uses QT5 in 3.0, which im currently packaging. Honestly i don't even see a real reason to split it then, its hassle for no true gain. just going to add qt5 as a hard dependency and call it a day.
Comment by Götz (goetzc) - Thursday, 22 February 2018, 18:47 GMT
A reason could be that when one needs libvlc, for example as a Cantata dependency, the VLC player get's pulled in, adding the desktop files, changing media files opening priorities, etc., when the original intent was to install Cantata for music playing. Having libvlc as another package would solve this.
Comment by Eli Schwartz (eschwartz) - Thursday, 22 February 2018, 19:01 GMT
The fact that XDG mimeapps.list preferences falls back on mimeinfo.cache for stupid reasons, is not a reason to split up packages just to avoid installing the desktop file.

Loading...