[Flac-dev] Compiling in Xcode

[Brian Willoughby]

On Jul 20, 2010, at 22:28, Dmitry Kichenko wrote:
> I'm not sure whether this is the best place to send the question,  
> but since I'm mostly interested in FLAC and there didn't appear to  
> be a better place for it.. here goes.

I think flac-dev is the perfect place for questions about building  
flac.  But the answers are probably going to be geared towards the  
FLAC point of view rather than the Xcode point of view.


> I pulled the latest source code from the SVN repo along with all  
> the external dependencies including FLAC. I've been able to compile  
> the FLAC.framework file using the 10.5 SDK in Xcode 3.2 with a  
> dozen or so warnings, but have been unable to compile the entire  
> Xiph.org QuickTime component project. It seems the dependencies  
> compile just fine, but then things explode with a fountain with  
> hundreds errors all of the same nature, choking seemingly on struct  
> definitions, for the most part:
>
> src/flac-1.1.0/src/libFLAC/include/protected/file_decoder.h:26:0  
> src/flac-1.1.0/src/libFLAC/include/protected/file_decoder.h:26:  
> error: expected specifier-qualifier-list before  
> 'FLAC__FileDecoderState'
>
> and
>
> /Users/dmitry/Developer/objc/xiph-qt/build-macosx/../OggImport/src/ 
> importer_types.h:99:0 /Users/dmitry/Developer/objc/xiph-qt/build- 
> macosx/../OggImport/src/importer_types.h:99: error: syntax error  
> before 'Track'
>
> are some of the repeating examples of errors.
>
> I've tried building PPC, 32 and x64 builds, as well as the  
> universal ones, but they all fail with the same errors. Would  
> anyone be able to point me in the right direction? It seems like  
> I'm just missing a compiler argument or a project build setting.

The flac sources are distributed in a configuration that is designed  
primarily for building from the command-line.  I seem to recall that  
there might have been an Xcode project in there at some point, but if  
there was, it never worked well.  In all honesty, I may be getting  
confused with some other open source project on that last point.

In any event, if you want to compile flac on OSX, then just use  
Terminal.app

Frankly, if you want to compile flac in Xcode, and you're getting  
mysterious errors, then it's probably a good sign this is a task  
better left to the experts.  It would be great if someone could set  
this up, but it's not necessary since the command line is available.   
I've been using Xcode since it was called ProjectBuilder, and I know  
the environment quite well.  However, I have found that it's usually  
more work than anticipated to convert a command-line build  
environment to a GUI Xcode environment.  It certainly should be  
simple, but it's probably not really worth anyone's time.  That said,  
if anyone does get it working, please share your Xcode project files  
so that Josh can hopefully incorporate them into the source release.

As for my OSX applications which use FLAC, I always add libFLAC.a to  
my project, as compiled and installed by the command-line makefile.   
In other words, rather than compiling the entire source for flac into  
my applications, I simply link to the library. I have not used the  
libFLAC++.a because I prefer not to mix Objective C and C++, but I  
can confirm that the Standard C libFLAC.a works perfectly fine for  
encoding and decoding FLAC files using the standard API.

By the way, I created an Installer.app package which installs the  
entire flac command-line tools and libraries into appropriate  
directories, and then you can just link your OSX applications to the  
precompiled library.  This is the OSX package that is available via  
links at flac.sourceforge.net

Brian Willoughby
Sound Consulting