[xine-devel] User survey for libraries and plugins

[R. B. <ro...@pa...>]

Hi Michael - 

What you wrote is pretty good, but I think this better...

 ( ) Spare me with those library dependencies. I just want this thing
     to work. Please put known-to-work versions of those libraries
     into xine-lib and default to using those internal versions. Using
     possibly back-level or custom libraries that might not match
     official releases, spending extra build/install time and extra
     kilobytes of harddisk space for the increased size for the
     xine-lib source for the possible double-installations of
     libraries is no problem for me.

 ( ) Having an internal copy is necessary, so include as many
     libraries as might possibly be used inside the xine-lib
     source. However let me set configure switches to use to use any
     installed versions of libraries I might have.

 ( ) Having an internal copy is nice, but when I have new enough
     versions of the libraries already installed on my system, please
     don't compile and install your versions. Instead, auto-detect but
     let me override when I want to compile and use the internal
     version over the external library. If you are missing a copy for
     some esoteric library like for a video card that I probably don't
     have anyway, that's okay.

 ( ) I use a package system like apt-get, synaptic, up2date, etc. that
     tracks dependencies and installs them when needed. So please
     don't include the copies and keep the size of xine-lib small. If
     some plugins don't get installed, that's okay - if I want that
     plugin I'll install a package for it or the necessary library
     that is missing. (Alternatively, I don't use a package system
     that automatically tracks dependencies but I still I prefer to
     control the installation of those libraries.)

Of course, I'm prepared to describe why I think this better if desired.

I'm curious what the size of xine-lib would be if it didn't have the
copies. My guess is 50%.

In such a survey you might list the various plugins and allow a
person to select "always use", "frequently use", "sometimes use",
"infrequently use", "never use".

Also it might also be interesting to ask which of these libraries are
installed anyway on the persons system. But if everyone has libmad
installed and knows it, and depending the results on your original
question, it might suggest what to do.

Keep up the good work.