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2 <BODY BGCOLOR=white>
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4 <FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size=2>
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5
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6 <P><B><I>In medias res</I></B></P>
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7
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8 <P>There are two major topic which always causes huge dispute and flame on the
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9 <A HREF="http://www.MPlayerHQ.hu/cgi-bin/htsearch">mplayer-users</A>
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10 mailing list. Number one is of course the topic of the</P>
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11
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12 <P><B><I>GCC 2.96 series</I></B></P>
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13
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14 <P>The <I>background</I> : there were/are the GCC <B>2.95</B> series. The
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15 best of them was 2.95.3 . Please note the style of the version numbering.
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16 This is how the GCC team numbers their compilers. The 2.95 series are good.
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17 We never ever saw anything that was miscompiled because of the 2.95's faultiness.</P>
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18
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19 <P>The <I>action</I> : <B>RedHat</B> started to include a GCC version of <B>2.96</B>
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20 with their distributions. Note the version numbering. This should be the GCC
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21 team's versioning. They patched the CVS version of GCC (something between 2.95 and 3.0)
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22 They patched it very deep, and used this version in the distrib because 3.0
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23 wasn't out at time, and they wanted IA64 support ASAP (business reasons).
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24 Oh, and GCC 2.95 miscompiles bash on the s390 architecture (there is
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25 no RedHat distribution for s390..) .</P>
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26
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27 <P>The <I>facts</I> : <B>MPlayer</B>'s compile process needs the
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28 <CODE>--disable-gcc-checking</CODE> to proceed upon detecting a GCC version of
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29 2.96 (apparently it needs this option on <B>egcs</B> too. It's because we don't
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30 test <B>MPlayer</B> on egcs. Pardon us, but we rather develop <B>MPlayer</B>).
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31 If you know <B>MPlayer</B>, you should know that it has great speed. It
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32 achieves this by having overoptimized MMX/SSE/3DNow/etc codes, fastmemcpy, and
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33 lots of other features. <B>MPlayer</B> contained MMX/3DNow instructions in a
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34 syntax that all Linux compilers accept it... except RedHat's GCC (it's more
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35 standard compliant). It simply <B><I>skips</I></B> them. It doesn't give
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36 errors. It doesn't give warnings. But hey, it compiles bash on s390 and
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37 IA64.</P>
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38
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39 <P>The <I>statements</I> : most developers around the world begun having
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40 bad feelings about RedHat's GCC 2.96 , and told their RedHat users to
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41 compile with other compiler than 2.96 . RedHat users' disappointment slowly
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42 went into anger. What was all good
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43 for, apart from giving headaches to developers, putting oil on anti-RedHat
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44 flame, confusing users? The answer, I do not know.</P>
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45
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46 <P><I>Present age, present time</I> : RedHat says that GCC 2.96-85 and above
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47 is fixed, and works properly. Note the versioning. They should have started
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48 with something like this. What about GCC 2.96.85 ? It doesn't matter now.
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49 I don't search, but I still see bugs with 2.96 . It doesn't matter now,
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50 hopefully now <B>RedHat will forget about 2.96</B> and turn towards <B>3.0</B>.
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51 Towards a deep patched 3.0...
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52 </P>
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53
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54 <P><I>What I don't understand</I> is why are we hated by RedHat users for
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55 putting warning messages, and stay-away documents in <B>MPlayer</B> .
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56 Why are we called "brain damaged", "total asshole", "childish" by
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57 <B>RedHat users</B>, on our mailing list, and even on the <B>redhat-devel</B> .
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58 They even considered forking <B>MPlayer</B> for themselves. RedHat users.
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59 Why? It's RedHat that made the compiler, why do <U>you</U> have to hate us?
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60 Are you <U>that</U> fellow RedHat worshippers? Please stop it. We don't hold
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61 a grudge against users, doesn't matter how loud you advertise its contrary.
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62 Please go flame Linus Torvalds, the DRI developers (oh, now I know why
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63 there were laid off by VA!), the Wine, avifile. Even if we are arrogant,
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64 are we not the same as the previously listed ones? Why do <B>we</B> have
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65 to suffer from your unrightful wrath?</P>
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66
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67 <P>I'm closing this topic. Think over it please. I (Gabucino) personally begun
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68 with <A HREF="http://www.redhat.com">RedHat</A>, then used Mandrake (sorry I
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69 don't know their URL), now I have <A
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70 HREF="http://www.linuxfromscratch.com">LFS</A>. Never held a grudge against
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71 RedHat or RedHat users, and I still don't. Hate is only comfortable. It
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72 won't bring you anywhere.</P>
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73
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74 <P><B><I>Binary distribution of MPlayer</I></B></P>
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75
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76 <P>Tons of users asked us about this. For example Debian users tend to say: Oh,
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77 I can <CODE>apt-get install avifile</CODE>, why should I <B>compile MPlayer</B> ?
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78 While this may sound reasonable, the problem lies a bit deeper than
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79 those-fuckin-MPlayer-developers-hate-gcc-2.96-and-RedHat-and-Debian.
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80 <UL>
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81 <LI><B>MPlayer's</B> speed (MMX, SSE, fastmemcpy, etc) optimizations are
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82 determined during compilation. Thus a compiled binary contains very
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83 processor-specific code. An <B>MPlayer</B> binary compiled for K6 will die
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84 on Pentiums and vice versa. This has to be workarounded by runtime
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85 detection, which is not an easy thing to do becase it causes massive speed
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86 decrease. If you don't believe (it was explained in details 10000 times on
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87 mplayer-users, search the archive), solve it and send us a patch. Someone
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88 begun work on it, but disappeared since then.</LI>
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89 <LI><B>MPlayer's</B> video/audio system is not plugin based. It is compiled
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90 into the binary, thus making the binary depend on various libraries (the
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91 GUI depends on GTK, DivX4 depends on libdivxdecore, SDL depends on libSDL,
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92 every SDL release contains an unique bug that has to be workarounded during
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93 compiletime, X11 output compiles differently for X3 and X4, etc). You may
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94 say: yes, let's make 30 versions of downloadable binaries! We won't. We
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95 will make these stuff pluggable in the future.</LI>
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96 <LI><B>MPlayer</B> includes GPL codes, and some non-GPL ones
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97 (like OpenDivX alpha 48). Arpi's demuxers and other code has a special
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98 license which is like GPL with one exception: it doesn't allow binary
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99 distribution. Thus, anyone who distributes a binary which contains Arpi's
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100 code (which is the core of <B>MPlayer</B>) is doing a
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101 <B><I>FORBIDDEN THING</I></B> ! For example that french guy called
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102 <B>Christian Marillat</B> who denied our request, and is still distributing
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103 binary Debian packages of <B>MPlayer</B>, despite the fact that there was
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104 at least one user who downloaded it and failed (of course compiling from
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105 source helped him). We're trying to be GPL, but there are still
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106 problems to resolve. Don't come and flame, instead help (or better,
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107 stay quiet). Thanks.
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108 </UL>
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109
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110 </HTML>
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