For the sake of testing, I just downloaded youtube-dl from Github [1]. I then tried to run the program, but it failed with:
/usr/bin/env: ‘python’: No such file or directory
Okay, the script can't deal with "python" vs "python3", whatever - I'll change the script's first line and move on. Next attempt:
$ youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pV8WFvSNYE
[youtube] 5pV8WFvSNYE: Downloading webpage
ERROR: Unable to extract uploader id; please report this issue on https://yt-dl.org/bug. Make sure you are using the latest version; type youtube-dl -U to update. Be sure to call youtube-dl with the --verbose flag and include its complete output.
I knew I would get this error because I got it two weeks ago already. And considering that the version number is `2021.12.17` that looks suspiciously close to a dead project, or at least for a project whose very description is "download videos from youtube.com or other video platforms".
Edit: I went through the repo and found that this bug has been reported two months ago [2]. I understand that the project is not dead in the sense that they are still looking at bugs, but if a major feature is not working for two months now then I think it's reasonable for people's faith in the project's future to be shaken.
> /usr/bin/env: ‘python’: No such file or directory
Your install is not configured properly. This is a googleable fix. (One example is to use `which python3` as part of your command https://stackoverflow.com/a/73610228)
Now in the first week of this issue I half recall the line in the code was pointed out, (possibly it's the one that's now being claimed as not a good fix still listed in the above) in one of the many people reporting the bug, with that being all that needed to be changed ... I didn't feel like at the time, grabbing the source, finding the offending line, and then compile it and besides there would probably be a working binary fix available for download that might have resolved a few other issues. I'd been following along every few days to a week to see there were any links to working forks compatible with older gear ...
Now my problem is I'm not running Win 13 or the latest linux distro but still I have the best up to date browser I've yet to find that runs on my old system ... and that link does nothing ... if I put the link in another it simply opens back at the top of the parent.
I figure I could copy every recent file one by one from the git repo and play at fooling with my own, but since someone commenting on this topic actually compiled the given source - only to land some old 2021 problem - sigh.
Now I have flipped though what I see in the above ... no fix info ... fucked and bye bye time. The next option touted as the fix sadly does not run on my old system, it could work with the online server but ... how long until ...
It is of course easier for people like me who are no longer or were ever competent programmers, let alone being well versed in python, to pick some other program - I've been told such as IDM will handle youtube antics fine as well as being compatible with older systems, so it may well be worthwhile to purchase a copy.
I can't follow this post very well. yt-dlp I think has this fixed. There is also ways to fix this without having to download youtube-dl file by file as you mention. (see this: https://stackoverflow.com/a/55562973 as a single example) there are are many easy ways to get around this issue. You can do it! Good luck.
Thanks. Unless you're inferring it works in interactive mode, I'll take it as a guide to rebuilding youtube-dl. Is there a link with all the updates in one pack or do I have to create a github account to gain access? Other than that, as an outline of a fix, the stackoverflow link as a solution seems vague to me.
There's a reply made to the current thread here which, to me anyhow, means the listed full source code at github has not been updated.
There are updated individual components - however it's been in the order of 16 years I've decompiled and adjusted and recompiled. It might be worth the effort ... if only youtube-dl was going to keep on sailing onwards. The nah moving to something else commentary informs me that sooner or later updates will probably get slower until such point people won't bother reporting issues - better for my old system to make the move sooner rather than later.
yt -dlp is probably relevant to the cheap online server I use with the latest python installed. I generally didn't use youtube-dl on it, unless the download was going to take some time and better to let the server accumulate it over a few hours. yt-dlp supposedly fixes the trick youtube used to try and discourage cli downloaders.
That depends on who "you" are.
Linux distros these days tend to ship modern python package with a python3 executable, no python executable. Many distros still support a python2 package, some install that as a python exeutable, some as a python2 executable.
iirc. homebrew on OSX installs python as a python3 executable, no python exeutable.
Hopefully no-one should support python v2 in 2023 ?
Fedora does the same. Must have been 3 or 4 years ago Python 2 was removed as a dependency from the core system packages and "python" started resolving to a Python 3 release.
I expect this has filtered down to RHEL9 now.
Multiple version are supported with "python2.7", "python3.9" etc. if a version older than the current default is required.
Expecting python3 to be available as 'python' means that _your_ install is broken (until the time when python3 re-implements all the syntax and semantics and stdlib of Python 2.7 so that code may run unmodified).
The I can't believe it's not youtube-dl quasi unofficial fork yt-dlp has a most recent stable release 2023.03.04 (last month).
Of the two one is keeping up with the month by month twists and turns of websites altering their video embed methodologies to defeat CLI rippers .. and the other one isn't.
There is much much more to the code base than simply youtube ripping, both can (in theory) also rip from (say) ABC Australia's iView, from the Royal Institute Christmas Lecture series, from redtube, etc (hundreds and hundreds of variations of websites).
That shim layer between the core ripping engine(s) and the manifold ways of embedding access to a stream is what is being kept current in yt-dlp releases (and -U updates).
Original most recent official youtube-dl (December 2021 release) can no longer find its update service.
A while ago youtube-dl broke and wasn't fixed. yt-dlp fixed the problem.
Granted, I haven't kept up on whether original youtube-dl eventually got around to getting its primary functionality to work. The several-month interregnum that definitely occurred seems like a good reason to consider it "dead".
It's been fixed but the new maintainer refuses to release a new version until someone manages to help him figure out how to get automated builds running (which seems to have been the problem for the past year and he refuses to just do a manual build so that youtube-dl at least works with YouTube).
Have you tried yt-dlp? I remember what made me switch. YouTube downloading didn't break, but became extremely slow when compared to my actual network speeds. YouTube seems to do something to fuck with the speeds every so often. yt-dlp is quick to hop on those issues.
It stopped being able to download videos from youtube. That's not the only functionality, but -- given the name of the software -- I'd say it should have been fixed. All the repo activity in the world won't balance out the inability to do the only thing you advertise that you can do.
youtube-dl only works for some people around the globe, as youtube is apparently running A/B testing. Yeah there's a sort of fix ... that's been tucked away at github by way of go nowhere link, but there's the given idea it's time to ditch the cheap computer or online server and try and get something else to run instead. I read that sort of sentiment as that yup it's probably dead and maybe time to move onto more expensive toys that programmers really give a fuck, well that year ... or just ignore youtube for the time being. It's sad because what I generally viewed on youtube was of no interest to the music industry.
youtube-dl is not dead, it just had a longer pause for reasons. There is (again) active development for some while now, after some reorganization and new focus[1].
They've alienated contributors, had toxic feedback to community patches and have in general done everything they can to become irrelevant.
These days yt-dlp covers my needs instead, and unlike youtube-dl, they the seem to be accepting patches, making yt-dlp work (and keep working) on more sites and services than youtube-dl does.
There's no (technical) reason for anyone to rely on youtube-dl any longer.
To be precise, what seems to have gone wrong is that youtube-dl went down the "insane compatibility" road.
The new maintainer has put demands in place to support python 2.6 and up, which is fucking bonkers. Nevermind the fact that 2.6 is even deader than 2.7 ever was (which was the version of python2 officially deprecated three years ago). A side effect of this is that the new maintainer also rejects any patches that introduce new dependencies (existing ones being used is fine though), which has killed support since nobody wants to reimplement certain things to work with a python version that is pretty much only used by one guy still running Windows XP (who began to whine on the issue tracker about being ignored even though XP hasn't even been enterprise supported by Microsoft since 2019 but I guess this one guy is a valuable user?)
yt-dlp on the other hand follows the "reasonable" road of compatibility, which is "current python3 version + 5 minor versions going back" (which is also the standard used for deprecating things in the python stdlib and security patches). Much better and it seems to have healthier contributors as a result.
>They've alienated contributors, had toxic feedback to community patches and have in general done everything they can to become irrelevant.
This sounds a lot like what happened to XFree86 when X.org forked it.
>There's no (technical) reason for anyone to rely on youtube-dl any longer.
Yeah, I gave up on youtube-dl a while ago when I discovered yt-dlp. The latter actually works really, really well, while the former is broken. I'm not sure why anyone still bothers with youtube-dl, but then again there's still a few weirdos who won't give up on XFree86 after all these years, and a few other weirdos who still refuse to abandon OpenOffice.org.
youtube-dl isn't fighting anything here. Their hoster uberspace.de is defendant in this suit for hosting a business card website pointing ytdl-users to github.
yt-dlp doesn’t have a standalone website so they’ll have to deal with Microsoft directly.
Edit: I wasn't aware development has resumed. The latest release is still stuck way back in the past though.
Also typoed 'yt-dlp' as 'youtube-dlp' in the original comment; now fixed.