Debian – Why was ffmpeg removed from Debian

debianffmpeg

Currently, ffmpeg is missing from APT packages when using the stable versions of Debian and Ubuntu.

There are numerous resources (example from SuperUser, another one from Debian's documentation and the one from AskUbuntu) which explain how to install it in a different (and more complex) way than a simple apt-get install ffmpeg.

What I wonder is why the package is not there in the first place?

From what I understood, avconv is a fork of ffmpeg and is a de facto standard for Debian similar distributions. Meanwhile, ffmpeg is not abandoned: the website mentions no intention to close the project in profit of avconv, despite the fact that the leader of ffmpeg left the project.

So:

Why ffmpeg was plainly removed from APT packages, instead of keeping it and simply adding avconv?
Is there a reason (other than the fact that it became more difficult to install ffmpeg) to stop using it?

Best Answer

Why was `ffmpeg` not available in the repo?

For some time there was a so-called "ffmpeg" available after Debian switched to Libav, but it was not from FFmpeg. This can probably be explained best with a a rough timeline of what happened:

Libav split from FFmpeg and kept the ffmpeg binary name (it also kept the names of the libraries, and the "libav" name was already being used by FFmpeg as a collective noun for the libraries: libavcodec, libavformat, libavutils, etc.).
The Debian ffmpeg package maintainer at the time, a member of the Libav fork, switched Debian to use Libav.
Libav eventually deprecated/renamed their ffmpeg to avconv, then eventually removed the counterfeit "ffmpeg", but some downstream users such as Ubuntu kept the old, fake "ffmpeg" for "compatibility and transitional" reasons for some time.
Debian/Ubuntu eventually removed the buggy, old, dead, fake "ffmpeg".
FFmpeg returns in Debian stable (jessie-backports) and Ubuntu Vivid 15.04.
Debian/Ubuntu drops Libav.

You're currently between steps 4 and 5. Updating to a newer release of your distro will allow you to install the real ffmpeg from the repository.

Is there a reason to stop using `ffmpeg`?

FFmpeg development is very active, and now that Libav has lost its major downstream users I think you can ask this question about avconv instead.

Other stuff

...the leader of the FFmpeg left the project.

Michael Niedermayer is still quite active. He just got tired of some of the admin duties and politics and resigned as leader. Also, it was a gesture to Libav developers as a potential step for reunification with Libav developers.

Related Solutions

Debian Stretch – Fix Update Issues with Buggy Dpkg

You can try reinstalling from snapshots; you'll find the appropriate version of libconfig-model-perl there:

wget http://snapshot.debian.org/archive/debian/20160924T233848Z/pool/main/libc/libconfig-model-perl/libconfig-model-perl_2.092-1_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i libconfig-model-perl_2.092-1_all.deb

Given the dpkg-maintscript-helper errors you're getting, with a current version of dpkg, there's probably something else badly messed up. To get libconfig-model-perl reinstalled, delete the prerm script and reinstall the package:

sudo rm /var/lib/dpkg/info/libconfig-model-perl.prerm
sudo dpkg -i libconfig-model-perl_2.092-1_all.deb

If that doesn't work, you can try downgrading dpkg itself to version 1.18.10, which is the last version released before the failing version checks were introduced. Once you've done that, try reinstalling libconfig-model-perl yet again — the version checks won't fail, and the maintainer scripts should complete without any other difficulties.

Once that's done, try aptitude reinstall ... again and if necessary, reinstall any other missing package from snapshots.

Debian – Why can’t APT find package

You need to have the full Jessie repository in your sources.list; you should have at least

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian jessie main
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian jessie-updates main
deb http://security.debian.org jessie/updates main

(you can add contrib if you want, and the corresponding deb-src lines if you want to be able to download source code for the packages too).

Check your sources.list contains at least those three lines, then run

apt update
apt install firewalld

The jessie-updates repository only contains updates to Jessie, it doesn’t contain the packages which were part of the original Jessie release and haven't been updated since. See What is the difference between the "jessie" and "jessie-updates" distributions in /etc/apt/sources.list? for more information.