gimp-gap ships a copy of ffmpeg

[Thibaut Paumard]

Hi,

I am the maintainer of the gimp-gap package (video plugin for the GIMP).

It ships in its source a copy of two library packages, including ffmpeg.

Those libraries are not built nor used in lenny. I am [1]trying to  
upload a new source package where they have been removed altogether. I  
think you will concur with me that it is important to do so,  
especially for ffmpeg which is touchy legally-wise.
[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-mentors/2009/08/msg00098.html

I am also trying to build the package against ffmpeg-debian, and here  
I need your help.

The package uses functions which are present in the shared object but  
not in the public API: for this reason, I still need to ship  
audioconvert.h and imgconvert.h within gimp-gap.

Worse, the function img_convert() is not present in libavcodec.so  
because ffmpeg is configured with CONFIG_SWSCALE.

Since gimp-gap uses img_convert(), I need to compile this function  
directly in gimp-gap, and therefore to ship those additional files:
libavcodec/imgconvert.c
libavcodec/imgconvert_template.c
libavcodec/dsputil.h
libavcodec/colorspace.h
libavutil/bswap.h
libavutil/intreadwrite.h

In total, shipping 10 files from ffmpeg-debian source is better than  
shipping a complete ffmpeg tarball, but still bad.

So for the questions:
- I don't get why CONFIG_SWSCALE inhibits building img_convert().  
Having img_convert() in debian's ffmpeg would solve 80% of my problem.  
Any hint why it is so?

- Any chance functions in audioconvert.h and imgconvert.h might get  
public?

- I believe upstreams shipping ffmpeg is fairly common, is there a  
more or less standard way to deal with that?


Best regards, Thibaut.