HOWTO: Building mplayerplug-in 2.70 RPM for Mozilla/Firefox

by Thomas Chung on Sep 26, 2004 (UPDATED 2005-02-15)

UPDATE 2005-02-15
Make sure to visit the original mplayerplug-in article for the latest release.
Yes, I helped the project for Fedora RPM packaging.

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mplayerplug-in is a browser plugin that uses mplayer to play digital media from websites.

The project just released a new version 2.70 on Sep 26, 2004. See the News.

Currently, the official RPM package supports Mozilla but not Firefox by default. In other words, it only installs "mplayerplug-in" plugin in Mozilla plugins directory (/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins) but not in firefox plugins directory (/usr/lib/firefox/plugins).

So in this article, I'll cover building mplayerplug-in 2.70 RPM package which will install "mplayerplug-in" plugin for both Mozilla and Firefox on Fedora Core 1 as an example but you will find the pre-compiled binary RPM packages for FC1 and FC2 at the end of this page.

Please note, mplayerplug-in depends heavily on MPlayer so make sure to install Essential and Optional MPlayer RPM packages first.

First, download following files:
Tarball - mplayerplug-in-2.70.tar.gz
Spec File - mplayerplug-in.spec

Let's begin:
(Make sure you have created rpmbuild directory in your own home.)

[tchung@localhost mplayerplug-in]$ ls
mplayerplug-in-2.70.tar.gz  mplayerplug-in.spec
[tchung@localhost mplayerplug-in]$ cp *.gz ~/rpmbuild/SOURCES/
[tchung@localhost mplayerplug-in]$ cp *.spec ~/rpmbuild/SPECS/
[tchung@localhost mplayerplug-in]$ rpmbuild -ba ~/rpmbuild/SPECS/mplayerplug-in.spec
Executing(%prep): /bin/sh -e /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.50879
+ umask 022
+ cd /home/tchung/rpmbuild/BUILD
+ LANG=C
+ export LANG
+ unset DISPLAY
+ rm -rf /var/tmp/mplayerplug-in-2.70-buildroot
+ cd /home/tchung/rpmbuild/BUILD
+ rm -rf mplayerplug-in
+ /usr/bin/gzip -dc /home/tchung/rpmbuild/SOURCES/mplayerplug-in-2.70.tar.gz
+ tar -xf -
+ STATUS=0
+ '[' 0 -ne 0 ']'
+ cd mplayerplug-in

.. omitted ..

Checking for unpackaged file(s): /usr/lib/rpm/check-files /var/tmp/mplayerplug-in-2.70-buildroot
Wrote: /home/tchung/rpmbuild/SRPMS/mplayerplug-in-2.70-1.FC1.src.rpm
Wrote: /home/tchung/rpmbuild/RPMS/i386/mplayerplug-in-2.70-1.FC1.i386.rpm
Wrote: /home/tchung/rpmbuild/RPMS/i386/mplayerplug-in-debuginfo-2.70-1.FC1.i386.rpm
Executing(%clean): /bin/sh -e /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.73232
+ umask 022
+ cd /home/tchung/rpmbuild/BUILD
+ cd mplayerplug-in
+ rm -rf /var/tmp/mplayerplug-in-2.70-buildroot
+ exit 0
[tchung@localhost mplayerplug-in]$

To install,

[tchung@localhost mplayerplug-in]$ sudo rpm -Uvh /home/tchung/rpmbuild/RPMS/i386/mplayerplug-in-2.70-1.FC1.i386.rpm
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
   1:mplayerplug-in         ########################################### [100%]
[tchung@localhost mplayerplug-in]$

Here is a screenshot of mplayerplug-in in action on Firefox on FC1: screenshot.png

Here are the pre-compiled binary RPM packages for FC1 and FC2.

You can now enjoy QuickTime Movie Trailers at http://www.apple.com/trailers/

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CHANGELOG

* Sun Oct 10 2004 Thomas Chung  2.70-1.FC1
- Disable MIMEType application/smil in plugin-setup.cpp
 
* Sun Sep 26 2004 Thomas Chung  2.70-0.FC1
- Rebuild for Fedora Core 1
- Add Plugin for Firefox
- See /usr/share/doc/mplayerplug-in-2.70/ChangeLog