Ffmpeg upgrade to version 4.2+?

Discuss
1

I am trying to get SpotDL pip package to work but it needs ffmpeg apparently.

$ spotdl https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6TNFDNHyRauIZwwf3uGouY
Your FFmpeg installation is too old (4.1), please update to 4.2+

How do I upgrade ffmpeg to 4+? It doesn’t look like a trivial package to upgrade.

Or is it too difficult to do without killing my system?
I see the latest version is this Debian -- Details of source package ffmpeg in bullseye but it is from debian 11.

Server specs:
yunohost:
repo: stable
version: 4.3.6.3
yunohost-admin:
repo: testing
version: 4.3.4.1
moulinette:
repo: stable
version: 4.3.3.1
ssowat:
repo: stable
version: 4.3.3.1

2

I don’t have access to my server right now. But if you could check what app depends on ffmpeg to understand if forcing update will break something

3

Or you can upgrde to YunoHost 11, which use Debian 11.
It is still in beta, so you can also wait for it to be considered stable.

1 Like
4

Ffmpeg as a huge dependency tree (more than 200 libraries). Upgrading it could break a lot of things. It would be trivial if it where in buster-backports, but it’s not (probably because it would imply backporting a lot of libraries).

I strongly advise you to wait for the publication of Yunohost 11, or to upgrade to the the last RC if you can’t wait and are ready to face some remaining bugs. It would be a lot easier and safer than upgrading the ffmpeg packages.

5

While I would advise you to wait or already upgrade to YunoHost 11 beta, you can also use FFmpeg static builds (John Van Sickle - FFmpeg Static Builds) and use a custom PATH for SpotDL to load that binary (including all its libs) instead of the current one (John Van Sickle - FAQ).

These static builds, even if they are unofficial, are listed on FFmpeg homepage: Download FFmpeg.

6

thanks for all your input. it seems to smart move is to wait for debian 11.

7

One further thing about this ffmpeg topic.

Have any of you used pipx in Yunohost? It sounds like it is like docker for python. Does this seem like a safe option? (It won’t affect my other apps whether it works or not)

(from https://github.com/spotDL/spotify-downloader)
## `pipx` Isolated Environment Alternative

For users who are not familiar with `pipx`, it can be used to run scripts **without** installing the spotDL package and all the dependencies globally with pip. (Effectively skipping over the [spotDL Installation](https://github.com/spotDL/spotify-downloader#Installing-spotDL) step)

First, you will need to install `pipx` by running:

python3 -m pip install --user pipx python3 -m pipx ensurepath

Next, you can jump directly to running spotDL with:

pipx run spotdl ...

ANSWERING my own question, pipx doesn’t hurt your system. It still doesn’t help me with ffmpeg dependencies. i thought it might package it all in there but no.