[Ffmpeg-devel] Re: [PATCH] Partial port of ffmpeg to MS Visual C - and a note on the inttypes.h issue

[Stefan Heinzmann]

Yuri Vilmanis wrote:

>  From the presence of declarations such as
> 
> #ifdef __cplusplus
> extern "C" {
> #endif
> 
> in your public headers, I infer that you want to support linkage to
> ffmpeg libraries (libav*) from C++ programs. (If this inference is
> incorrect, feel free to ignore the following)

You must have had your fun already when you wrote your message, as I'm
sure you knew in advance that you'd not get much fun out of the answers
here. ;-)

Your inference above is obviously wrong. Those source lines in the
public headers are there for unexplained reasons, as there is nothing
named C++ anywhere on the radar of the ffmpeg developers. As C is the
only programming language worth mentioning, and C99 is the one and only
standard, C++ must be an aberration in the mind of a few misguided
non-real programmers. ;-)

You would in fact do the world at large a service if you put forward a
patch that removes these completely pointless lines of garbage from the
public header files. This would serve as a powerful demonstration of the
superiority and righteousness of C99, particularly to those who still
blasphemously insist on calling C++ a programming language compatible
with C! ;-)

Of course if ffmpeg complied with C89, an outdated standard that has
disappeared into oblivion long ago, it would be a lot easier to work
with wrapper generators for other languages or programming systems, or
with other bloatware languages of C-descent. But as has been
demonstrated time and again on this list, none of those should exist
anyway, at least not in this universe, and hence supporting them would
be utterly pointless. Worse, it would likely produce list traffic from
people who are clueless enough they don't even use a (the only!) real
programming language. Still worse, who are clueless enough to use broken
platforms! ;-)

Open source software projects, as we all know, are there to prove a
point. The production of code that is useful to some is a purely
coincidental side effect. You should be grateful that there are
right-minded people who have the truth firmly planted in their heads and
don't hesitate to disseminate it to you. It is for your best, although
you might not yet realize it! And, hey, it is free! ;-)

(Yes, I had my fun, too, when writing this)

Cheers
Stefan