Bug#732159: Should this package be removed?

[Reimar Döffinger]

On Sun, Feb 16, 2014 at 12:16:59PM -0500, Reinhard Tartler wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 16, 2014 at 11:21 AM, Moritz Mühlenhoff <jmm at inutil.org> wrote:
> > On Sat, Dec 14, 2013 at 05:07:36PM -0500, Reinhard Tartler wrote:
> >> On Sat, Dec 14, 2013 at 4:28 PM, Moritz Muehlenhoff <jmm at debian.org> wrote:
> >> > Package: mplayer
> >> > Severity: serious
> >> >
> >> > Should this package be removed? If so, please reassign to ftp.debian.org
> >> >
> >> > - Last upload nearly two years ago
> >> > - FTBFS for a long time
> >> > - Incompatible with current libav
> >> > - Alternatives exist (mplayer2, mpv)
> >>
> >> I tend to agree, however please keep in mind that this also removes
> >> mencoder, for which no drop-in alternatives exist atm: Currently, two
> >> packages depend on mencoder, toonloop and photofilmstrip:
> >
> > Shall we go ahead with the removal now?
> >
> > toonloop has been removed from testing half a year ago and the last
> > maintainer upload was two years ago and photofilmstrip is already
> > removed from jessie since half a year. popcon is marginal for both.
> >
> > We can ask FTP masters to remove mplayer forcefully despite the
> > remaining reverse deps.
> 
> In lack of any *constructive* comments about this, I would say yes,
> let's remove them.

What would constitute a constructive comment?
mplayer2 is unmaintained and as far as I can tell mpv has completely
different command-line syntax at the least (though I am not well
informed about either).
Libav compatibility is not intentionally broken upstream, but it
is not tested in any systematic way either (possibly not at all).
Though I agree that there is little point in keeping the outdated
rc4 version.
But one more point: I am not sure all programs using mencoder
will have it as a dependency correctly.
For example flvtool (exists only in stable though it seems) should
be using mencoder for some tasks but does not list it as a
dependency.
Now, deb-multimedia.org provides it anyway so it won't leave people
completely stranded, but I wonder if maybe there was a way to
somehow point people there when they try something like
"apt-get install mencoder"?
I can see why you might have some concerns with that, but it would
seem like a kind of user-friendly solution to me that doesn't
require much effort from anyone...