MPlayer Port Suggestion

[Eric Cronin]

On Nov 20, 2008, at 5:47 PM, Perry Lee wrote:

> Altoine Barker wrote:
>> I had discussed with Eric Cronin on this list about using svn  
>> source of
>> mplayer to build a port. I did some crash reading on svn and to avoid
>> the pitfalls of committing an update that will break the port, I
>> wondered was it possible to get svn sources by changesets? And if so,
>
> You can use `svn up' to synchronize your working copy to a certain  
> revision.
>
> e.g., `svn up -r 100'
>
>> either of these two command examples. Remember, I did a speedy crash
>> course reading
>> on svn and that is only because I must run out and I won't be back  
>> soon
>> but I had to at least share what I have gathered so far before I  
>> left. TIA
>
> You should check out http://svnbook.red-bean.com/ -- it's a great  
> read :).

MPlayer also has a web interface to their SVN repo at <http://svn.mplayerhq.hu/mplayer/trunk/ 
 > which lets you do graphical diffs of various versions (I haven't  
tried Cornerstone or Versions or any of the other Cocoa frontends to  
subversion, but they may also provide useful graphical tools for  
getting a handle on development activity).

An e-mail I sent to another interested person (Perry actually, I see)  
about updating MPlayer right:

> So the main problem is that the MPlayer devs are steadfastly against  
> any regular release or snapshot schedule, as well as supporting  
> those releases already made.  1.0rc2 is almost a year old at this  
> point, has several security alerts against it, and is also lagging  
> feature-wise.
>
> The best solution I can see to this is to judiciously select a  
> recent but not too recent SVN revision, do a checkout, and roll our  
> own distfile to put in <http://svn.macports.org/repository/macports/distfiles 
> >.  We can then selectively apply changes from subversion or jump to  
> a whole new snapshot on our own clock.  Finding a good revision to  
> use as a starting point is the first challenge, and then updating  
> the Portfile configure stage to mesh with the options of that  
> snapshot is next.  If this is something you'd be interested in  
> looking into that'd be great!

In addition to the SVN history, the MPlayer mailing lists from around  
the time of the snapshot picked would also be good, as problems and  
regressions tend to get registered there.

Thanks,
Eric