Re: [PATCH] profiles/targets/desktop: drop USE=xvid from make.defaults

Ionen Wolkens <[email protected]> Mon, 23 Mar 2026 23:08:42 -0400
Newsgroups	gmane.linux.gentoo.devel
Message-ID	<acIAOpwp2BKB9wAJ@eversor>
On Tue, Mar 24, 2026 at 02:47:54AM +0000, Sam James wrote:
> Ionen Wolkens <[email protected]> writes:
> 
> > xvid used to be pretty popular in the early 2000s which made some
> > sense to have as default, but nowadays it is nothing but a relic
> > and users that really want it should opt-in manually.
> >
> > Also, on media-video/ffmpeg, last I know of USE=xvid should not be
> > needed for xvid playback and that USE is rather only for encoding which
> > even less people should need as they'll use more modern codecs.
> > This means "most" video players should still be able to play these
> > likely very old files without issues.
> >
> > One negative impact this change will have is with media-gfx/blender
> > which seems to need a list of encoders always enabled incl. xvid
> > (unsure if it really still needs xvid in 2026 though).
> >
> >   ffmpeg? ( media-video/ffmpeg:=[encode(+),lame(-),jpeg2k?,opus,
> >               theora,vorbis,vpx,x264,xvid] )
> >
> > ..most of which are already off-by-default, but users will need to
> > update their package.use to also add xvid -- may cause some confusion.
> >
> > On a related note, only a handful of package even (still) have the USE,
> > which also makes it questionable set globally rather than per-package if
> > needed:
> >
> >  * media-libs/avidemux-plugins
> >  * media-tv/mythtv
> >  * media-video/ffmpeg
> >  * media-video/ffmpeg-compat
> >  * media-video/gpac
> >  * media-video/mplayer
> >
> > media-libs/xvid also hasn't received a release in 6 years, could
> > potentially become a last-rite candidate if it breaks. No longer
> > pulling that ancient package by default for ffmpeg users is the
> > primary benefit here.
> 
> Agreed, gyakovlev wanted to do this years ago.
> 
> Bug: https://bugs.gentoo.org/831211

Thanks, thought I vaguely remembered this coming up before but didn't
see an open bug (because I closed it myself...). Back then only
considered the dependency aspect rather than the desktop default.

I'll add the bug tag locally.

> 
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Ionen Wolkens <[email protected]>
> > ---
> >  profiles/targets/desktop/make.defaults | 4 ++--
> >  1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
> >
> > diff --git a/profiles/targets/desktop/make.defaults b/profiles/targets/desktop/make.defaults
> > index d27a8a2d324f..1c114761cd2a 100644
> > --- a/profiles/targets/desktop/make.defaults
> > +++ b/profiles/targets/desktop/make.defaults
> > @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
> > -# Copyright 1999-2025 Gentoo Authors
> > +# Copyright 1999-2026 Gentoo Authors
> >  # Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2
> >  
> > -USE="a52 aac acpi alsa avif bluetooth branding cairo cdda cdr cups dbus dri dts dvd dvdr elogind encode exif flac gif gpm gtk gui icu jpeg jpegxl lcms libnotify mad mng mp3 mp4 mpeg ogg opengl pipewire pango pdf png policykit ppds pulseaudio qml qt6 screencast sdl sound spell startup-notification svg tiff truetype vorbis udev udisks unicode upower usb vulkan wayland webp wxwidgets X xcb xft x264 xml xv xvid"
> > +USE="a52 aac acpi alsa avif bluetooth branding cairo cdda cdr cups dbus dri dts dvd dvdr elogind encode exif flac gif gpm gtk gui icu jpeg jpegxl lcms libnotify mad mng mp3 mp4 mpeg ogg opengl pipewire pango pdf png policykit ppds pulseaudio qml qt6 screencast sdl sound spell startup-notification svg tiff truetype vorbis udev udisks unicode upower usb vulkan wayland webp wxwidgets X xcb xft x264 xml xv"



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ionen
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