The VideoLAN Forums

Hi All, is there a way to reduce libTVVLCKit.a file size?

Now is about 330MB
and max tvOS app size is 200MB.

Thanks,

Link it against your binary and it will magically slim down to 20-30MB. Static libraries include debug symbols!

Thanks! 20 megs now

what is the process of linking a lib as a binary to your binary (is it embed binary in Xcode build settings?)

is there a place where I can simply download TVVLCKit.framework or libTVVLCKit.a already compiled? (every try i have done to compile it never succeed, always stating 'MobileVLCKit/MobileVLCKit.h' file not found")

I was able to build a libTVVLCKit.a till about one week ago, due to compilation issues when building the gsm contrib part. I hope this gets fixed soon. Reason is, that while building code.c in the contrib gsm a missing prototype of memcpy causes the build to fail (because of -Werror option). Just copy a prototype of memcpy manually, then it builds.
After cloning VLCKit to your local machine, use a GUI-based git utility and create a local branch based on the last commit end of december. My TestFlight reports has given this as the most reliable version of libTVVLCKit.a (best performance even sometimes crashing). This "backport" uses an older version of libVLC sources, which require some small changes (live555 contrib has to be updated and one change in VLCKit). You can find the required changes when browsing through the commits using the git GUI utility.
After building libTVVLCKit.a with Archive option (to keep bitcode), the lib shrinks down to about 240 kB after stripping non-external symbols.
This is the version my App (vuplusTV) is built with for the AppStore release. The App has a download size of less than 18 kB, as the linker removes "dead" code, that is not used/referenced.

I could share the special backport version I prepared of libTVVLKKit.a, but my upload speed is very poor, so it takes several hours to upload the file. Maybe someone can provide a public server for downloading the lib once uploaded (or someone at videolan is pushing the version to the nigthly servers). But anyway this version comes with a big disclaimer - it is not proven except for the things I use it for.

if the build is only 240K, why not putting it on some new dropbox account on the public folder and share the link?

no matter what i do at archive TVVLCKit with my project (linking with my project the .o file or the .framework file) the result is still 206 MB archive size (before TVVLCKit it was 44 MB)



any suggestions?

doesn't any one here knows the answer?

I do not have a problem sharing the build via Dropbox, but it requires patience until the file is availble.

The archive size is quite huge, because it contains a very long symbol table, which will also cause a warning when uploading the archive for review.
Do not look at the archive size but at the size of the resulting App.

i managed eventually to lower the size by removing the .Framework file and adding only the "libTVVLCKit.a" for the apple tv (and not the one for the simulator, that reduced it little (143 M), if i will find another way to reduce it even further - i will update this post,

thanks for the reply

Well, you need to link against that static library, not distribute it. VLC for Apple TV uses it as well and is less than 20 MB...

the distribution part is understood, but isn't including the .a file as a dependant library enough? (in the target's Linked Framework and Libraries on the General tab)
if it is then 20M is definitely not what i got