Read 2026-10-04
mpv-player/mpv: technical due diligence, read from its repository
What Borehole read in mpv-player/mpv's code and history at e470f89: its licence, security advisories, releases, review practice, tests, dependencies and operations. Every finding cites the file and line it rests on. The full report also covers the team and asks the questions the code cannot answer.
| Dimension | Rating |
|---|---|
| Architecture & Codebase — including AI provenance | strong |
| Engineering Process & SDLC Maturity | adequate |
| Product & Engineering Maturity | adequate |
| Security & Reliability Posture | not assessable |
| Observability & Operations | not assessable |
| Fit with the Acquirer | not assessable |
What the repository says
LICENSE: Relicensed: GPL-2.0 → GPL-3.0 (2011-03-24) → GPL-2.0 (2013-10-12)
Architecture & Codebase — including AI provenance
strongplayer/command.c is 8,633 lines, 52× this codebase's median file
adequateThe median source file here is 165 lines. 18 files exceed 1,650 lines, the largest being 8,633. Size is not a defect on its own — some problems genuinely live in one place — but these are where merge conflicts, review fatigue and single-owner knowledge concentrate, and they are the first thing that slows an inheriting engineer down.
player/command.c:1 — 8,633 lines (52× median) |
video/out/wayland_common.c:1 — 5,114 lines (30× median) |
demux/demux.c:1 — 4,994 lines (30× median) |
video/out/gpu/video.c:1 — 4,532 lines (27× median) |
options/m_option.c:1 — 4,108 lines (24× median) |
Engineering Process & SDLC Maturity
adequateTests cover a thin slice of the codebase
adequate29 test files against 659 source files (4.4%). This does not measure whether the tests are good, only whether enough of them exist for the codebase to be changed safely by someone who did not write it — which is exactly the situation after an acquisition.
| 29 test files / 659 source files |
Product & Engineering Maturity
adequate2% of bug fixes add or change a test
adequateOf 270 fixes in the last 24 months, 5 touched a test. A fix without the test that would have caught the bug can quietly come back, and the suite never learns from what went wrong.
| 5 of 270 |
Security & Reliability Posture
not assessableThe build runs third-party code it does not pin
adequate7 third-party CI actions are referenced by a tag or branch rather than a commit, so they run whatever that tag points to on the day. Tags have been moved to malicious commits in real supply-chain attacks, and a piped script is whatever the server returns that minute. Pinning to a commit is the fix, and it is small.
.github/workflows/build.yml:561 — action pinned by tag |
.github/workflows/build.yml:732 — action pinned by tag |
Relicensed: GPL-2.0 → GPL-3.0 (2011-03-24) → GPL-2.0 (2013-10-12)
adequateThe root licence changed 2 time(s). Code taken under earlier terms stays under them; check which terms any fork or customer relied on.
1 advisory against this project in the last 24 months
adequateThe newest was published on 2026-05-12. A project that publishes advisories is telling its users about its fixes, and the count and pace say how much security work it carries. Whether 1 of them are fixed in the code you ship could not be told from this history: its version is only known to be at least 0.41.0. Answer lives in: the release you run, set against each fixed version. The record is incomplete: NVD: 4 records name mpv with nothing tying them to this repository (CVE-2025-40238, CVE-2026-47114, CVE-2026-52876, …).
| 2026-05-12: GHSA-546v-22c3-7927 (moderate): Terminal sequence injection |
Observability & Operations
not assessableNot rated: only 4 of 16 checks could reach a conclusion here; the rest do not apply to this repository or could not read it.
Fit with the Acquirer
not assessableNot rated: structurally not assessable from a repository.
Read more, or read your own
The full report on mpv-player/mpv: every dimension, the questions for the room, and the audit log.
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