[vlc-devel] [PATCH 2/2] thread: fix compilation with clang 7 or older

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Le vendredi 28 février 2020, 12:51:57 EET Jean-Baptiste Kempf a écrit :
> On Fri, Feb 28, 2020, at 11:46, Rémi Denis-Courmont wrote:
> > My experience shows the opposite. Installing or even compiling LLVM as a
> > cross-compiler is easy and does not need root.
> That's totally not true for numerous platforms.

I totally *literally* agree with that.
I also think it's completely irrelevant.

It's hard, if at all possible, on proprietary ISA (been there done that, at 
previous $dayjob) - but they typically don't support VLC to begin with. It's 
also hard with OS ABI's not fully supported upstream (e.g., MingW) - but we 
don't have a problem on Windows or MacOS here and now.

It's easy on embedded, desktop and Android Linux (also been there done that).

> > I suggest you read the forum. People don't know how to, can't or are
> > afraid of, updating native system tools. I don't personally mind the
> > Meson version. We could also list flex, bison, Luac, wayland-scanner,
> > etc.

> We have extra/tools/ and contribs for that.
> Not compilers or the basic toolchain.

Certainly, as I already noted, you can't compile the native build system 
compiler in tools, even less in contribs. That would lead to a chicken-and-egg 
paradox. You also can't build the POSIX shell interpreter and GNU/make there.

But the "not compilers" statement is overly broad and that makes it plain 
wrong.

We already compile "basic toolchain" compilers for, e.g., Lex and Yacc files. 
We also already compile cross-compilers, e.g., for Lua. And while I am not 
aware of an existing case of cross-compiling a compiler, but it's an insult to 
the future to say that we won't. Who's to say that we won't need to embed 
libllvm or similar in VLC in the future. And there's nothing to prevent 
compiling a cross-compiler for C/C++/ObjC either, except for lack of trying.

-- 
Rémi Denis-Courmont