From 41198d0c024dc57d005f839ddcde2e323b278b29 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: diego Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 00:00:00 +0000 Subject: Move English files to en/ subdirectory. git-svn-id: svn://svn.mplayerhq.hu/mplayer/trunk@9383 b3059339-0415-0410-9bf9-f77b7e298cf2 --- DOCS/users_against_developers.html | 190 ------------------------------------- 1 file changed, 190 deletions(-) delete mode 100644 DOCS/users_against_developers.html (limited to 'DOCS/users_against_developers.html') diff --git a/DOCS/users_against_developers.html b/DOCS/users_against_developers.html deleted file mode 100644 index 65bcfbf721..0000000000 --- a/DOCS/users_against_developers.html +++ /dev/null @@ -1,190 +0,0 @@ - - - - - Developer Cries - MPlayer - The Movie Player for Linux - - - - - - - -

Appendix E - Developer Cries

- -

There are two major topics which always cause huge dispute and flame on the - mplayer-users - mailing list. Number one is the topic of the

- - -

E.1 GCC 2.96

- -

The background: The GCC 2.95 series is an official GNU release - and version 2.95.3 of GCC is the most bug-free in that series. - We have never noticed compilation problems that we could trace to GCC 2.95.3. - Starting with Red Hat Linux 7.0, Red Hat included a heavily - patched CVS version of GCC in their distribution and named it 2.96. Red - Hat included this version in the distribution because GCC 3.0 was not finished - at the time, and they needed a compiler that worked well on all of their - supported platforms, including IA64 and s390. The Linux distributor - Mandrake also followed Red Hat's example and started shipping GCC 2.96 - with their Linux-Mandrake 8.0 series.

- -

The statements: The GCC team disclaimed any link with GCC 2.96 and - issued an official response to - GCC 2.96. Many developers around the world began having problems with GCC 2.96, - and started recommending other compilers. Examples are - MySQL, - avifile and - Wine. - Other interesting links are - - Linux kernel news flash about kernel 2.4.17 and - Voy Forum. - MPlayer also suffered from intermittent problems that were all solved by - switching to a different version of GCC. Several projects started implementing - workarounds for some of the 2.96 issues, but we refused to fix other people's - bugs, especially since some workarounds may imply a performance penalty.

- -

You can read about the other side of the story - at this site. - GCC 2.96 does not allow | (pipe) characters in assembler comments - because it supports Intel as well as AT&T Syntax and the | character is a - symbol in the Intel variant. The problem is that it silently ignores the - whole assembler block. This is supposedly fixed now, GCC prints a warning instead - of skipping the block.

- -

The present: Red Hat says that GCC 2.96-85 and above is fixed. The - situation has indeed improved, yet we still see problem reports on our - mailing lists that disappear with a different compiler. In any case it does not - matter any longer. Hopefully a maturing GCC 3.x will solve the issue for good. - If you want to compile with 2.96 give the --disable-gcc-checking - flag to configure. Remember that you are on your own and do not report any - bugs. If you do, you will only get banned from our mailing list because - we have had more than enough flame wars over GCC 2.96. Please let the matter - rest.

- -

If you have problems with GCC 2.96, you can get 2.96-85 packages from the - Red Hat ftp server, or just go for the - 3.0.4 packages offered for version 7.2 and later. You can also get - gcc-3.2-10 packages - (unofficial, but working fine) and you can install them along the GCC 2.96 you - already have. MPlayer will detect it and use 3.2-10 instead of 2.96. If you do - not want to or cannot use the binary packages, here is how you can compile the - latest GCC from source:

- -

Go to the GCC mirrors page - page and download gcc-core-XXX.tar.gz where XXX is - the version number. This includes the complete C compiler and is sufficient - for MPlayer. If you also want C++, Java or some of the other advanced GCC - features gcc-XXX.tar.gz may better suit your needs.
Extract the archive with
- tar -xvzf gcc-core-XXX.tar.gz
GCC is not built inside the source directory itself like most programs, - but needs a build directory outside the source directory. Thus you need to - create this directory via
- mkdir gcc-build
Then you can proceed to configure GCC in the build directory, but you need - the configure from the source directory:
- cd gcc-build - ../gcc-XXX/configure
Compile GCC by issuing this command in the build directory:
- make bootstrap
Now you can install GCC (as root) by typing
- make install

- - -

E.2 Binary distribution

- -

MPlayer previously contained source from the OpenDivX project, which - disallows binary redistribution. This code has been removed in version - 0.90-pre1 and the remaining file divx_vbr.c that is derived - from OpenDivX sources has been put under the GPL by its authors as of version - 0.90pre9. You are now welcome to create binary packages as you see fit.

- -

Another impediment to binary redistribution were compiletime optimizations - for CPU architecture. MPlayer now supports runtime CPU detection (specify - the --enable-runtime-cpudetection option when configuring). It - is disabled by default because it implies a small speed sacrifice, but it is - now possible to create binaries that run on different members of the Intel - CPU family.

- - -

E.3 nVidia

- -

We dislike the fact that nVidia - only provides binary drivers (for use with XFree86), which are often buggy. - We have had many reports on - mplayer-users - about problems related to these closed-source drivers - and their poor quality, instability and poor user and expert support. - Some examples can be found on the - - nVidia Linux Forum. - Many of these problems/issues keep appearing repeatedly. - We have been contacted by nVidia lately, and they said these bugs - do not exist, instability is caused by bad AGP chips, and they received - no reports of driver bugs (like the purple line). So if you have a - problem with your nVidia card, you are advised to update the nVidia driver - and/or buy a new motherboard or ask nVidia to supply open-source drivers. - In any case, if you are using the nVidia binary drivers and facing driver related problems, - please be aware that you will receive very little help from our side because we have - little power to help in this matter.

- - -

E.4 Joe Barr

- -

Joe Barr became infamous by writing a less than favorable - - MPlayer review. He found MPlayer hard to install, but then - again he is not very fond of - reading documentation. - He also concluded that the developers were unfriendly and the documentation - incomplete and insulting. You be the judge. - He went on to mention MPlayer negatively in his - 10 Linux predictions for 2002 - In a followup - review of xine - he continued stirring up controversy. Ironically at the end of that article he - quotes his exchange with Günter Bartsch, the original author of xine, that - perfectly summarizes the whole situation:

- -

- However, he also went on to say that he was "surprised" by my column about - MPlayer and thought it was unfair, reminding me that it is a free software - project. "If you don't like it," Bartsch said, "you're free not to use it." -

- -

He does not reply to our mails. His editor does not reply to our mails. - Here are some quotes from different people about Joe Barr, so you can form your - own opinion:

- -

Marc Rassbach has something to say - about the man.

- -

- You may all remember the LinuxWorld 2000, when he claimed that Linus T said - that 'FreeBSD is just a handful of programmers'. Linus said NOTHING of the - sort. When Joe was called on this, his reaction was to call BSD supporters - assholes and jerks. -

- -

A quote - from Robert Munro on the - mplayer-users - mailing list:

- -

-
He's interesting, but not good at avoiding, um... controversy. Joe Barr - used to be one of the regulars on Will Zachmann's Canopus forum on Compuserve, - years ago. He was an OS/2 advocate then (I was an OS/2 fan too).
- -
He used to go over-the-top, flaming people, and I suspect he had some hard - times, then. He's mellowed some, judging by his columns recently. Moderately - subtle humor was not his mode in those earlier days, not at all.
-

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