[FFmpeg-user] Compilation Guide / MSVC on Wiki

[Greg Oliver]

On Wed, Dec 2, 2020 at 11:43 AM Carl Zwanzig <cpz at tuunq.com> wrote:

> On 12/2/2020 9:32 AM, hinderanyoption81 via ffmpeg-user wrote:
> > Upon reading the "Compilation Guide / MSVC on Wiki", I am confused about
> at least three issues.
> > 1. The Guide starts with a sentence "FFmpeg can be built on Windows with
> Visual Studio", and then it says:
> >
> > Finally, run: For MSVC:
> > ./configure --toolchain=msvc
> > make
> > make install
>
> Yep, the instructions aren't clear.
>
> I've successfully built ffmpeg on/for windows using msys2/mingw-w64. You
> need to install msys2, then the compiler packages, then things like (IIRC)
> automake and it's friends, then others. I can look that up later, but the
> first time was a somewhat iterative process in "Can't find HHHH", so I
> install HHHH and try again; eventually it all worked.
>
> Start at https://www.msys2.org/. Also, there are msys and mingw packages,
> most of the time, you need the mingw one.
>
> This is a very useful setup on a windows system.
>
>
> To answer the MSVC question- I only use it for things that aren't set up
> to
> build in mingw :).
>
> Later,
>
> z!
>

All of this makes me wonder -

A lot of folks here run Windows (fine, I get it).  Windows 10 includes a
*free* Hyper-V hypervisor.  These same people are wanting to manipulate
audio/video or they would not be here and as well not have the disk space
for a virtual guest.  The instructions and packages for Linux are available
almost everywhere, so why not someone provide directions on creating a
Hyper-V guest of Ubuntu (arguably the easiest distro for newbies to Linux)
and showing how to get it installed and add ffmpeg packages.  I have not
been on this list long, but I can say that the strife of people looking for
non-existent windows binaries is frequent even though we know there are a
few shared library build as well as (at least one I know of) static build
with no dependencies.  It just seems like a lot of work for something so
easy to bypass with another route.

That route is so much easier than compiling *anything* under Windows since
MS keeps under lock and key all of their library code for all of their
compilers and linkers, etc..

It just seems a no-brainer to me.  Much easier route to both explain and
maintain..  Setup some shared folders between host and guest, Linux can see
the files that actually reside on the Windows host and write the results
right back to the share so they show up in Windows natively.