[FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] MinGW+FFmpeg survival guide

[Axel Holzinger]

Hi,

Friday, June 24, 2011 6:38 PM, Stefano Sabatini wrote:
> On date Friday 2011-06-24 16:13:05 +0000, Peter Wimmer (Lists)
> encoded:
> 
> > Wouldn't it be time to make ffmpeg compile with Visual Studio
> > instead of all the MinGW mess? It is really a pain for Windows
> > developers to contribute to ffmpeg.
> 
> As for me, I'm not against if someone is willing to do the work
> and maintain it.

I tried to get it working with the Intel compiler for windows/msvc
(icl) which is C99 compliant.

The problem is/was that the configure script doesn't support it,
because Intel was so smart to only support the MSVC compiler switch
notation and not the icc (Linux) one.

If the configure script would support creating the right switches for
icl (the ms ones, yes I know '/' instead of '-' also), this would be a
major step.

IMHO building ffmpeg with mingw isn't the issue. The main issue is
that it's not possible to debug into ffmpeg code (when using the
libav* libs), because the symbol format between gcc and msvc are
completely different. It's Microsoft's fault that they don't publicly
specify their debug/symbol format. If that was the case it at least
would be possible to have gcc create msvc readable symbols. But that
does lead to nothing.

If at least a debug buid would work - with assembly being disabled -
that would be very helpful. As it's possible to use yasm with msvc
(even with 201 via vsyasm), a release build should also be possible.

After all, unfortunately I can't offer a lot time. What I can do is
help out with hardware and windows/msvc/icl if there is interest.

Currently I'm working together with colleagues on a C project that has
to run on Linux and Windows. I know that you guys don't like cmake. We
use it and for me it's still a hard struggle, but in the end it does
it's job and creates our make files / msvc files. For a Windows dev
it's a huge improvement to have everything together in the msvc ide.
But never mind, I don't want to start a flame, honestly.

So perhaps after the fork there is more peace and a time for a new
estimation of the situation with windows. Ffmpeg could play a much
more important role on the win boxes if it was less hard to use it
(the libs) as now.

All the best
Axel