1. Helping to Maintain/Improve FFmpeg for Debian

1.1. Git usage

Here is how to get ffmpeg from both the Debian Multimedia team's git repository and from FFmpeg's official git repository.

Clone the repository.

git clone https://anonscm.debian.org/git/pkg-multimedia/ffmpeg.git

You may also want to checkout some important branches as well.

cd ffmpeg-debian
git checkout -b pristine-tar origin/pristine-tar
git checkout -b upstream origin/upstream
git checkout -b upstream.unstripped origin/upstream.unstripped
git checkout -b master.unstripped origin/master.unstripped

Next add the FFmpeg git repository to the list of tracked repositories

git remote add ffmpeg git://git.ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg
git fetch ffmpeg

Create a branch for ffmpeg/master

git checkout -b upstream.official-ffmpeg ffmpeg/master

Finally, within this branch, clone libswscale. Note the '-o' option.

git clone -o ffmpeg git://git.ffmpeg.org/libswscale

1.2. Unstripped FFmpeg

Here is how to get unstripped FFmpeg on Debian.

Download the source package of ffmpeg-debian:

apt-get source ffmpeg-debian
cd ffmpeg-debian*/

Add a new changelog entry and change the package name to ffmpeg:

dch -i 'Make an unstripped package'
sed -i -e 1s/ffmpeg-debian/ffmpeg/ debian/changelog

Regenerate the package control file:

debian/rules debian/control

Download the unstripped source code:

debian/rules get-orig-source DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=internalencoders

A file called ../ffmpeg_*.orig.tar.gz should be created.

Unpack it and copy your debian directory there:

tar xf ../ffmpeg_*.orig.tar.gz
cp -a debian ffmpeg/
mv ffmpeg/ ../ffmpeg-0.svn20080206
cd ../ffmpeg-0*/

Then build the unstripped packages:

debuild -b

Then install the unstripped packages:

sudo debi