VLC 0.9.9 configure fails on Snow Leopard

[tomleonard]

I'm trying to build VLC 0.9.9 (yes I really need this version ) on Snow Leopard:

OS/X version 10.6.2
Xcode version 3.2.1 with SDKs: 10.4: (8S2167), 10.5: (9J61) and 10.6: (10M2003)

1. I downloaded and unpacked vlc-0.9.0.tar.bz2, set the environment variables per the "Quick Steps on Mac OS X 10.6" from the wiki HowTo: http://wiki.videolan.org/OSXCompile

2. Did a "./bootstrap x86_64-apple-darwin10" and "make" for the contribs. A pre-compiled set of libraries was downloaded and installed.

3. Did a bootstrap for VLC

4. Ran "./configure --enable-debug --disable-mad --build=x86_64-apple-darwin10" and got a "Could not find libavcodec or libavutil" error. Both libavcodec.a and libavutil.a are in ./extras/contrib/lib

Can anyone please shed some light on this issue for me.

Thanks,

Tom

[fkuehne]

Okay, first of all, while I tested most of VLC's 0.9 code during Snow Leopard's development phase, we never released 0.9 versions for this OS, so you will like stumble across some issues (especially with regard to Apple Remote and video display) in case your compilation succeeded. Note that you'll likely fail to compile a 64bit version of VLC for the Mac using the 0.9 source - it isn't fully adapted as far as I remember.

I recommend you to take the 1.0.5 tarball. It is save to compile it in 32bit mode on Snow Leopard. bootstrap in contribs with "i686-apple-darwin10" as argument and make sure to export the following variables _prior to_ configuring VLC:

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CFLAGS="-m32" CPPFLAGS="-m32" CXXFLAGS="-m32" OBJCFLAGS="-m32"

Additionally, use this configure flag:

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--build=i686-apple-darwin10

You need to do all this since gcc creates 64bit binaries on Snow Leopard by default. However, VLC 1.0.x is known to have some interface issues in 64bit mode, which turns it impossible to be used in a useful manner. That's why we only provide 32bit builds until now.

VLC 1.1 will probably include full 64bit support on Mac OS X. I'm currently doing successful tests with it and looks quite promising in fact. A preview release should be out soon along with its source package.


I hope this clarifies the situation a bit. Feel free to actually describe why you want to compile VLC on your own at all, so I can help you a bit more in detail.

[tomleonard]

Thanks. Was able to compile, but failed on the packaging step:

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for i in vlc.xcodeproj Resources README.MacOSX.rtf ; do \ cp -R ./extras/package/macosx/$i ./tmp/extras/package/macosx/; \ done REVISION=`git describe --always` && \ cat ./extras/package/macosx/Info.plist | \ sed "s/#REVISION#/$REVISION/g" > ./tmp/extras/package/macosx/Info.plist fatal: Not a git repository (or any of the parent directories): .git make: *** [VLC-release.app] Error 128

Why do we need to compile from sources?

We have written an interface module that turns VLC into a media playback service (ala the VLC telnet interface). The service manages things like playback, volume control, etc. For the most part, it acts as a "pass through" from our media player GUI to VLC. We have also made a few minor mods to VLC to support our rich media packaging technology (see http://www.pypeline.com) and to manage video windows.

All works well on Windows, but we have issues with the Mac port, mainly with management of video windows. So far, we have been building VLC 0.9.x on Leopard. Silly us , we decided to move our development to Snow Leopard.

So, it seems like we either revert to Leopard and VLC 0.9.9, or move forward to VLC 1.0.5 where we need to identify the coding differences between 0.9 and 1.0. As an example, the following code works for 0.9.9, built on Leopard, but doesn't seem to work with 1.0.5 built on Snow Leopard (we don't get audio or video output.

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void VLCPtr::Play(const wxString &idName, wxInt32 timeout_ms) { // ___ Make sure nothing else is playing WaitStop(timeout_ms); // remove EP3 variables wxASSERT(m_pPlayList != NULL); RemoveEP3Variables(m_pPlayList); // ___ Play it #ifdef __VLC_0_8_6c__ playlist_LockClear(m_pPlayList); playlist_Add(m_pPlayList, idName.c_str(), NULL, PLAYLIST_APPEND | PLAYLIST_GO, PLAYLIST_END); #else playlist_Clear(m_pPlayList, false); playlist_Add(m_pPlayList, idName.utf8_str(), NULL, PLAYLIST_APPEND | PLAYLIST_GO, PLAYLIST_END, true, false); #endif // this shouldn't be necessary if PLAYLIST_GO flag is set //playlist_Play(m_pPlayList); playlist_Next(m_pPlayList); }

[fkuehne]

The packaging issue can be easily solved by removing the line using the git command in the top build dir's Makefile (if you compiled VLC without a designated build folder, it will be stored in the top directory of its source). This line just puts the git revision in the Info.plist of VLC.app. It's absolutely save to remove it. This issue will be fixed with 1.1 btw.

Your code seems to be okay, although I'm unfamiliar with the usage of the WxWidgets API, especially on Mac OS X. The playlist API didn't change much from 0.9 to 1.0.

BTW. Are you aware that there is a Cocoa-based framework on Mac OS X called VLCKit, which allows you to embed VLC's entire functionality in your own applications?

I would encourage you to move on to VLC 1.0.x as the 0.9.x branch (even its latest version 0.9.10) is known to be prone to some security issues and no longer maintained. Otherwise, it probably makes sense to backport our security patches. Updated information on this matter is always available at http://www.videolan.org/security. Especially VideoLAN-SA-0901 is probably of interest to you.

[tomleonard]

Thanks very much for you support. We've resolved our issues and are moving ahead with VLC 1.0.x.

[fkuehne]

Cool