[vlc-devel] Question about VLC build complexity and documentation (academic project – UNICAMP)

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Le lauantaina 4. lokakuuta 2025, 20.18.58 Itä-Euroopan kesäaika José Eduardo 
Santos Rabelo a écrit :
> During our attempts to build VLC on *macOS* and *Windows*, we found the
> process quite complex, with many undocumented or outdated steps, especially
> compared to Linux. This raised an academic and practical question for us:
> 
> “Is the current complexity of building VLC intentional — due to
> architectural or dependency-management reasons — or simply a result of
> historical evolution and limited documentation?”

We don't make it more complex on some platforms just for the sake of it. 
Hundreds of people have made the same remarks and nobody has proposed a 
concrete solution that would not be platform-specific and thus inapplicable.

It is also worth noting that we *need* to build from Linux x86 as much as 
possible because that is what our infrastructure runs.

-- 
Rémi Denis-Courmont
Tapiolan uusi kaupunki, Uudenmaan entinen Suomen tasavalta