[vlc-devel] AppImage for distributing VLC builds for Linux

[probono]

2016-05-07 22:13 GMT+02:00 Jean-Baptiste Kempf <jb at videolan.org>:
> On 07 May, probono wrote :
>> I have been working on putting together a proof-of-concept AppImage of VLC:
>> https://bintray.com/probono/AppImages/VLC/_latestVersion#files
>
>> https://github.com/probonopd/AppImages/blob/master/recipes/vlc/Recipe
>
> It's a good start, and a good idea.

Thanks. Glad you like it.

> However, I do not understand a few things:
>  - why compile manually ragel, autoconf etc, while we have extras/tools
>    for that?

Thanks for the pointer, I wasn't aware of that. Will try to use
extras/tools next time.

>  - CentOS is probably not the best thing to maintain, tbh, seeing that
>    most VLC developers are using Debian derivatives.
> Ubuntu 14.4 LTS or 12.4 would make more sense.

Good to know. I guess this will make my life easier. Is 12.04 the
oldest distribution on which trunk can still be built? How about
debian 6 or 7? I am trying to build on an old distribution in order
not to get dependencies on "too recent" glibc or other system
libraries, so that the resulting AppImage can run on as many target
sytems as possible.

>  - VLC can be built with Qt5.

Normally it shouldn't be a problem to use Qt5, I have built other
AppImages with it, such as Subsurface and Scribus. However I couldn't
get VLC to compile with Qt5 on CentOS 6; possibly it will work when I
use another build system.

>  - if needed, alsa should be added to the contribs, not compile here.

Are you saying it shouldn't be needed?

>  - the hacks around wget|curl are a bit WTF.

Hey, they work. But I get it that I should build on another build system...

>  - why disable-ncurses?

Could not get it to compile on CentOS 6.

>  - there is already a desktop file. see share/vlc.desktop.in

Yes, should use that. Thanks.

>  - the hacks around LD_LIBRARY_PATH are wtf too..

This is only for ldd to find all libraries during AppImage creation
time. At runtime AppRun sets LD_LIBRARY_PATH so that libraries in the
AppImage are picked up.

>  - you should build Qt with the contribs

What would be the advantage of doing so? I would like to avoid
building Qt myself if not absolutely required because it would further
increase build time. It is already now close to the allowable maximum
on the cloud services I am using for building, Docker Hub and
Travis-CI.

Speaking of which, how are the VLC nightlies generated and is it
imaginable that there could be
http://nightlies.videolan.org/build/linux one day?