[vlc-devel] [RFC] Merging extras/tools & contribs

[Steve Lhomme]

On 11/02/2019 20:30, Rémi Denis-Courmont wrote:
> Le maanantaina 11. helmikuuta 2019, 17.45.39 EET Steve Lhomme a écrit :
>> On 11/02/2019 09:10, Rémi Denis-Courmont wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> The thing is, the Win32Compile wiki page still advises using prebuilt
>>> contribs. I don't think GPL is a problem on Windows desktop. That
>>> being the case, I don't thini we can break prebuilt contribs...
>> I've used this page a lot but now it's outdated. I have my own guide to
>> build VLC on Msys2: https://github.com/robUx4/vlc-msys
> That page is about cross-compiling Windows, which is still the recommended
> procedure as far as visitors are concerned. I don't personally care if we stop
> prebuilt contribs - but we cannot have the cake and eat it.

OK, it's a bit different. But given how often gcc evolves nowadays and 
the goal to use LLVM as the main toolchain going forward, I don't think 
prebuilt contribs will survive.

It does mean that getting a first VLC build for Windows will take a bit 
longer for newcomers. But I think it's better than something not working 
and then people who want to contribute are left wondering how they'll 
even get VLC to compile (because let's face it, with a mix of autotools, 
cmake and meson, one has to know a bit about toolchain to hack in there).

>
> And beside the portability problem, I remain extremely dubious regarding the
> dependencies propagation in case of merged contribs and tools.

I agree, although that would solve some other differences between 
compiling instructions, ie how to get the proper required packages. Here 
they are either on your system or they will be built. All you need is 
working native and target compilers.