I'm using fc6 right now, which is no longer getting new updates apparently. No big deal. The only problem I'm having is with some of the compile options for the rpms. There is a lot of stuff that I wish ffmpeg had been compiled to support, but it was not.

I want to recompile ffmpeg, but right now it's installed with an rpm. If I use yum to remove it, it wants to remove all the dependencies.

I do know about " rpm -e --nodeps ffmpeg", but I'm kindof afraid that will break something. I tried that approach for adding utf-8 support to pcre so i could compile a different program, and I ended up re-installing the rpm after a couple trying hours.

Is there a good way to do this? Can I just install over the original? that doesn't seem like a good idea either.

I'm not really a linux newbie (about 4 years in), but it seems like a newbie question that I've never answered.

Thanks,
Bill

Just install your version under a different prefix than the RPM installs it. I would guess the RPM installs to the /usr prefix. When you configure ffmpeg, specify /usr/local or even your home directory. Something like thisAdd any other options you'd like.

To use ffmpeg, either execute it with the absolute path (/usr/local/bin/ffmpeg) or make sure /usr/local/bin precedes /usr/bin in your $PATH variable.

You can remove old packages either way --nodeps -e or install over the original using --upgrade. Your main problem is going to be that when you install a later version of a software package it may also demand later versions of its dependencies.

To keep the dependency problem in hand you should always install using rpm. If you have to use source tarballs then you should use checkinstall to create a rpm package from the source and then install the rpm package.

http://www.asic-linux.com.mx/~izto/checkinstall/

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Steve Stites

The easiest way out is to upgrade. Nobody likes to hear it, but there it is. If you cannot upgrade every year(Fedora's current schedule)consider a different distro. When support was dropped for FC5 I moved all my servers over to Centos5. Centos is RHEL with the logos removed. It has a long support life (5+years), is free to download/update, and is rock solid. It also "feels" very much like FC6.

to clarify. "install over the original" should have read something like: "compile the source code and 'make install' so that the rpm's files will be overwritten by the newly compiled files. the rpm will not be uninstalled". That's what didn't seem like a good idea to me.

checkinstall is amazing. I'm using it now. I hope everything works.

it turns out that ffmpeg didn't have any prereqs after all. so in this case, it wasn't a problem. will a yum install a checkinstall rpm to upgrade a repository rpm?

bill

yum cannot tell the difference between a checkinstall created rpm and one created by Fedora. yum does a fair bit of work checking dependencies and it may reject the checkinstall created rpm because of dependency conflicts that yum cannot resolve. If you get into dependency hell then it is easier to work your way out of it using rpm than yum because you have more options available with rpm than with yum.

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Steve Stites