> MPlayer needs quite a few headers that are not "basic". The configure > output gives little information about which of the things checked for > are really required or useful at all (some do more harm than good); even > if you manage to get a binary it can be hard to know whether it's really > a reasonable configuration or if the resulting player is missing some > important functionality. If you're missing some dependency there's no > information how to get it. Even if the dependencies are packaged for > your distro it's nontrivial to find some of the right packages to > install based on just configure output. This is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about. There is a very great tendency, especially with FOSS but in computing generally, to assume that things which are not obvious, are. This is especially the case where software engineers work in a day to day environment that has a lot of givens which other people rarely need or have. P
