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

[Ankit]

Hi

I attempted some fixes a while ago but my machine was weak (i5 2 core)
and the possible machine/arch/compiler configurations too many to test
and verify individually, which the existing code has already taken
care of over the years.

https://code.videolan.org/videolan/vlc/-/merge_requests?author_username=ankitm&scope=all&state=all

Ankit

On 05/10/25 16:48, Rémi Denis-Courmont wrote:
> 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 process quite complex, with many undocumented or outdated steps, especially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.
>