I was recently trying to build the a52dec gstreamer plugin for gstreamer version 1.14.0 on Ubuntu 16.04. This plugin is part of gst-plugins-ugly.
The a52dec plugin is needed to decode ac3 audio.
This version of gstreamer compiles with the autoconf tools. To compile the plugins it is necessary to run the following commands:
./autogen.sh
make
sudo make install
sudo ldconfig
The problem is that by default on my system the plugin is not compiled due to the following error.
“plug-ins with dependencies that will NOT be built: a52dec”
Which of course does nothing but beg the question, what dependency is needed? Would it be a more helpful error message if the failed dependency (a52dec-dev) were listed?
In order to fix this error it is necessary to install the needed development library dependency as follows.
sudo apt-get install a52dec-dev
I am writing this up because I have run into similar errors in the past. That is, a gstreamer plugin that doesn’t compile because some dependency was not met. Those previous errors have been lost to my limited memory. Hopefully, this note will help someone who just wants to decode some ac3 audio in the future.
