mirkosp wrote:so I wish to hold off the guide to until vapoursynth is completely up and running on all OSes. It currently is in a mostly usable state on Windows (though it still needs a buncha improvements), but for the other OSes it's left to building from source.
And with the way these things usually go, that'll probably be the way it stays. /cynical
The most you may need to do for Mac users is step them through installing homebrew, since its probably inevitable for it to get a formula at some point (considering AvxSynth already has one, but there's no reason to use that for anything but academic curiosity.?.you're still better off just using AviSynth 2.6 under Wine)? There's probably zero need to worry about Linux users, since A) the source distros likely already have it available in the user areas or will in short order (there's already an AUR for Arch users), and B) the INSTALL file that comes with the source code covers how to build it.
Waiting on Ubuntu probably means waiting on Debian, and if not, who knows how long that'll take considering how long it took for MediaInfo to finally get into Universe (it didn't get in there until Precise, aka 12.04, aka the current release that only came out six months ago - prior to that you had to use the project's official PPA)? There's no way it'll be in the repos for 12.10 (13.04 *might* be a possibility but still pretty damn unlikely), since the distro itself is only now wanting to shift its main version of Python to 3.x. The alternate solution is to wait on a PPA - unlikely, IMO - or for there to be a ruleset added to the source so that using apt's automatic dependency resolution+build system is possible (discounting that they could just go ahead and use the instructions in INSTALL)?
I wouldn't wait on Fedora, either, for largely the same reason: the INSTALL instructions are probably enough, or someone will come up with a user-submitted or quasi-unofficial repository like the situation that darwinx has been in for the last few releases.
Other than that, there's just too much variety in package management solutions and software provided by them to wait on the distros themselves having it available through their official repositories. There's a certain point where the operating principle for Linux is that for most of them, the user should be assumed to know how to deal with installation from source, or to know how to find the unofficial repositories themselves and use those - any more than that and you aren't teaching them anything about VapourSynth, you're teaching them how to use their own operating system. The big distros are often notoriously sluggish on getting this stuff included or up-to-date (hell, getting up-to-date versions of mplayer[2] or ffmpeg/libav or x264 is already typically left to the user compiling them on their own because the official maintainers can't be arsed to do it, or only do it every six months unless there's a security issue)?
Which also brings up the point that even if VapourSynth gets in, you still have to deal with all the other software not necessarily being up-to-date, again throwing it back to the users having to build everything again. So I'd just ignore the point on getting it installed and have it laid out for usage. Installation instructions can be added later, or you could link to established guides elsewhere about doing it, if it was really necessary.
All of this ignoring the part where there's been this disconnect between AviSynth scripting and CLI use for a long time, for insanely dumb reasons. Comparatively speaking, AviSynth syntax (or Python syntax) is a lot more complex than the build process or general CLI use. Having to open the Terminal or Command Prompt to do some preparation shouldn't be treated as a deterrent. After all, if the requisite steps are all right there and only need to be copy-pasted, it's the user's own fault for being lazy (or stubborn) if they don't want to follow them. There's only so much hand-holding you can do.