VLC skins are typically distributed in the form of .vlt files (see https://www.videolan.org/vlc/skins.html and https://www.videolan.org/vlc/skins2-create.html), which are renamed tarballs (or, alternatively, renamed ZIP files) containing a "theme.xml" file along with assets for the skin. VLC requires archive support to be able to read these tarballs/ZIP files. If VLC is not compiled with archive support, an error like the following is shown when attempting to use a skin: > [000055cd86a61720] skins2 interface error: unable to attach stream_directory, treat as XML! > [000055cd86a61720] skins2 interface error: no XML found in theme /home/sophie/vlc-skins/darkvoodoo.vlt > [00007f60a4c61480] xml xml reader error: XML parser error (line 1) : Document is empty > > [000055cd86a61720] skins2 interface error: no skins found : exiting > [000055cd86967a20] main playlist: playlist is empty This occurs because without archive support, the only filetype VLC can support for skins is the theme.xml file itself, which requires the user to manually dearchive the .vlt file into a separate directory so that the assets can be found alongside the skin. Note that VLC itself does not warn that this is the case, and this has been an issue for years - see, for example, jlpoole's post in https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-8376840.html#8376840, and the Reddit post at https://www.reddit.com/r/Gentoo/comments/9zr33e/vlc_skins2_doesnt_work_even_with_correct_use_flag/ . That being the case, I would suggest forcing archive support to be compiled into VLC whenever skins support is enabled. If this is deemed to be unsuitable (because of the ability of VLC to load decompressed skins), I would suggest strongly warning the user that they may not be able to use skins without archive support also being enabled.
The bug has been closed via the following commit(s): https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo.git/commit/?id=6e180b2f8f787bee676839f2b67e83e3c1d52a9b commit 6e180b2f8f787bee676839f2b67e83e3c1d52a9b Author: Guillermo Joandet <gjoandet@gmail.com> AuthorDate: 2023-09-25 23:12:33 +0000 Commit: Sam James <sam@gentoo.org> CommitDate: 2023-11-13 04:37:16 +0000 media-video/vlc: make USE archive required when USE skins VLC skins are tar archived and will not work without this dependency. Closes: https://bugs.gentoo.org/907189 Signed-off-by: Guillermo Joandet <gjoandet@gmail.com> Closes: https://github.com/gentoo/gentoo/pull/33060 Signed-off-by: Sam James <sam@gentoo.org> media-video/vlc/vlc-3.0.9999.ebuild | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
