[macrob]

Hello,

i am running Debian Wheezy on a real amd64 machine. I installed xbmc from debian-backports (actual 2:13.1~rc1+dfsg1-1~bpo70+1).
I am trying to find a solution to get RAR support working. Rar files are still not listed.
For now i could not find any solution for Debian.

Is RAR support generally disabled for Debian, is there any way to enable it, if yes how?


I tried to install xbmc on a virtual machine with lastest Debian "Testing". No rar support here, too.


Thanks in advance!

[fritsch]

Build from source. Debian removes what they think "user does not need".

[HenryFord]

Build from source. Debian removes what they think "user does not need".

That's not quite true - Debian removes rar support because it is "non-free" as in not open-source. Since XBMC is pulled from the regular repositories, it is not allowed that it depends on non-free software in any way. As a prime example: Installing 7zip from the regular repositories does not give you any support for rar either.

[un1versal]

No because xbmc/kodi doesnt support just any system installed extractors, its hardcoded hacked unrarxlib (made in xbox days iirc) there was a PR https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/2122 to use opensource libarchive but thats been in limbo code for a long time.

[HenryFord]

Again - rar is not a free format in the sense that Debian wants. We had this discussion a few years back on the mailing list. Debian, without non-free repo installed, will never fully support rar archives. Libarchive also only sports very limited rar support (read only, and that with limitations applied) and it seems like it isn't developed any longer. This means: In order for XBMC to be distributed on the regular repositories, rar support has to be pulled out.

Edit:
By the way... http://xbmc.org/xbmc-accepted-into-debian/

Edit2:
I'm wrong.
https://packages.debian.org/wheezy/unar

[un1versal]

The answer seems in any case, either compile or use some 3rd party repository that doesn't mangle features in the software. Since the 3rd option is to add support to sourced=code that doesn't offend any distros packaging policies.

[fritsch]

Debian does not packages non-free software, cause of their policy. As debian makes a distribution for endusers and decides better "free" than what "user would want", while every debian user only should need free software.

Now, we are back at my statement: "Debian removes what user does not need" :-)