Binary packages and path: dependencies

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Apr 11, 2012, at 08:03, Thibaut Paumard wrote:

> I recently contributed a Portfile for yorick-av, a package which depends
> on either ffmpeg or ffmpeg-devel. Ryan suggested to code this dependency
> as path:lib/libavcodec.dylib:ffmpeg.
> 
> This works well as long as the package is built from source, but as I
> understand it, it will lead to breakages with the autobuilt binary
> packages because ffmpeg and ffmpeg-devel are not binary-compatible.

Sigh. Yes, my advice to use a path:-style dependency is only good when the development version maintains binary compatibility with the released version, and I forgot that the ffmpeg developers are disproportionately in the habit of breaking binary compatibility.

I don't like having a "devel" variant (I don't think we have one in any other port) but I doubt I'll like any other proposal better; I'm just cranky about ffmpeg and the problems their (lack of a proper) versioning strategy causes for MacPorts.