In mplayer-1.0_rc4_p20100506.ebuild, MPLAYER_REVISION is set to SVN-r30554, while it seems to be r31140. In mplayer-1.0_rc4_p20100612.ebuild, MPLAYER_REVISION is set to SVN-r30554 too, while it seems to be r31371. This number is shown with `mplayer -v`, so it could be a problem when giving this information for debugging. The ./version.sh file included in MPlayer tarballs is used to otherwise autodetect the revision from ./.svn/entries, which is however not included in Gentoo tarballs. As there does not seem to be any other use of "MPLAYER_REVISION", maybe the .svn directory should be kept (if there is no personal information from the packager in it) when making snapshot tarballs, to avoid having to update the revision number in the ebuilds manually.
Although I support your idea in general, adding the .svn folder as a whole would add another 331 KiB to the bzipped tarball. Although this sure isn't much, it would cause additional load for mirrors and smallband modem users. I'm not involved in the snapshot tarballing process, but I think it's easier just to exclude .svn directories in general than excluding every one except the root one. Updating the revision in the ebuild seems easier to me at least.
MPlayer releases include a VERSION, snapshots without .svn (http://www.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/mplayer-export-snapshot.tar.bz2) include a snapshot_version file. I'd suggest e.g. using the MPlayer snapshots and using the snapshot_version file to generate a VERSION file in the ebuild that also indicates it is a gentoo build.
(In reply to comment #2) > MPlayer releases include a VERSION, snapshots without .svn > (http://www.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/mplayer-export-snapshot.tar.bz2) > include a snapshot_version file. > I'd suggest e.g. using the MPlayer snapshots and using the snapshot_version > file to generate a VERSION file in the ebuild that also indicates it is a > gentoo build. nice idea, implemented it, thx