gaupol Suggests mpv but should Depend on it

[Marnanel Thurman]

gaupol Suggests mpv but does not Depend on it.

However, if you install gaupol without also installing mpv, gaupol is unable to play videos.

If you attempt to do so, it displays a dialogue saying "/bin/sh: mpv not found", which is going to baffle the users.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.04
Package: gaupol 1.3.1-1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.15.0-54.58-generic 4.15.18
Uname: Linux 4.15.0-54-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.9-0ubuntu7.7
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Sat Jul 20 14:31:22 2019
InstallationDate: Installed on 2019-02-08 (162 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS "Bionic Beaver" - Release amd64 (20180426)
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gaupol
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Osmo Salomaa (otsaloma)]

Hi,

I added an upstream bug report on this too. This is not to say Ubuntu can't make changes to dependencies, but I think this is mostly upstream's fault (and that's me).

https://github.com/otsaloma/gaupol/issues/136

As background, the first confusion is that there's both an internal GStreamer video player as well ability to launch an external player. This confusion will remain as I think both are needed. As external video players, all of mpv, MPlayer and VLC are supported. mpv is the default due to it supporting precise seeking. Before the addition of mpv, the choice was MPlayer and VLC and they were and remain equally good/bad, seeking only to keyframes.

https://mpv.io/manual/master/#options-hr-seek

[Marnanel Thurman (marnanel)]

That makes sense.

Do you think gaupol could depend on some virtual package which mpv, MPlayer, and VLC all provide? Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be one at present.

Could gaupol produce a less mystifying message if none of the video packages are present?

[Osmo Salomaa (otsaloma)]

Gaupol needs the video player to support a command line argument that specifies an initial seek where the playback begins. Only the more "power user" video players support that, many common players such as GNOME's Totem don't. Because of that any generic virtual package ("video-player") is no good, it would need to be gaupol-specific ("gaupol-video-player"). That sounds like overkill to me, but it's a packaging issue, not my call.

Regarding the error message, yes I'll fix that upstream, that's in the issue I filed.

[Amr Ibrahim (amribrahim1987)]

I'd say this is fixed now. A dependency on mpv is too strong for a subtitle editor.