Re: RFC: New dependency on FFmpeg?

FFmpeg doesn't have a particularly stable API or ABI. Dynamically 
linking to it isn't that great of an idea because the .so number version 
increments fairly often requiring at least a relink. The audio decode 
routine is up to avcodec_decode_audio4 by now, and who knows when 
avcodec_decode_audio5 will happen. The deprecated functions do 
eventually get removed and distros can have them compiled out.

It's a really good lib if you can require specific versions, and either 
static-link it or ship with the version you build with, but I imagine 
the constantly-breaking ABI would be more of a headache for a codebase 
like Wine unless you directly copy over the code (but then, why not just 
take the decoder routines ffmpeg has and wrap them into whatever Windows 
audio decoder API?).

Another issue is that ffmpeg requires C99 to build, whereas Wine doesn't.