[vlc-devel] Re: Can't Build from Source, want to help with image filters/scaling and quality control

[Jean-Paul Saman]

Neil Woodall wrote:
> Let me introduce myself. I'm a Fellow of DSP engineering at Pixelworks, 
> Inc (www.pixelworks.com). We build image processing SOC's for TV's and 
> projectors. We have started moving our development environment from 
> Windows to Linux, so we are looking to replace some of our Image 
> processing DSP tools.
> 
> I've been trying to evaluate the viability of using VLC as a shell for 
> our company's image processing development (which would add ~30 
> software/dsp engineers to the list of people working to find and solve 
> bugs for VLC along with some methodology engineers for quality control), 
> but I've been unable to build the package from source using Fedora Core 
> 5. I've tried using the forums for help and emailing this list, but 
> without any luck. I've also looked at the commands given to the 
> buildbot, searched the web, etc...and can not find a solution.
> 
> I finally gave up when trying to duplicate the buildbot set of commands 
> I got an error that byte_t was defined twice. Once in 
> /extras/contrib/include/libraw1394/raw1394.h and once in  
> include/vlc_common.h. Since libraw1394 is part of the make src 
> instructions (and I could find no other instructions on what to include 
> in extra/contrib... vs. /usr/lib location) this definitely points to a 
> bug in the make instructions.

This is a known problem. It is a clash between 2 libraries defining 
byte_t in public headers. The former libraw1394 didn't define it. So in 
your case the solution should be to undef it in libraw/raw1394. Or not 
buildt in 1394 support at all.

> I even downloaded the rpm for 0.8.5 so that I could verify that I had 
> all the required shared libraries and still could not build 0.8.5 (or 
> 0.8.6 or 0.8.6-bugfix or the trunk) from the sources.

I don't have those problems with the RPM's. I use them myself for 
rebuilding om RH/FC/CentOS without problems. Could you share with us the 
error messages? That way we can help you.

> I would still like to use VLC as a platform, but unless I can get a 
> reproducible process for building the application from the sources, 
> which at minimum means producing a step by step set of instructions that 
> goes from a clean install of Fedora Core 5 to working application, we 
> can not use VLC as a starting point.
> 
> If we do use VLC, our contribution to the effort would be to extend the 
> image filters and scaling routines to use the Cell SPE's, which would 
> give the PS3 users something pretty special, and I would probably insist 
> (especially after my experience) that our methodology department setup a 
> nightly build(s) to be run on our server farm. We would probably also 
> look into actually trying to verify that the build works, not just that 
> it makes without errors.
> 
> BTW, one thing I would recommend for quality control purposes is to 
> change your nightly build process to start with a checkout of the svn 
> database to an empty directory for vlc and any source code that would be 
> built in the extra/contrib directory. I would also recommend that you 
> don't use external servers for getting the source code that is in the 
> extra/contrib directory or that you statically link to, but instead 
> store a copy on your svn server and get it from there. That way when you 
> tag a release, you also tag ALL the make dependencies.
> 

That is what buidbot does.

Gtz,
Jean-Paul Saman.

-- 
This is the vlc-devel mailing-list, see http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
To unsubscribe, please read http://developers.videolan.org/lists.html