[Vorbis-dev] Re: win32 sdk

[illiminable]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ralph Giles" <giles at xiph.org>
To: "illiminable" <ogg at illiminable.com>
Cc: <vorbis-dev at xiph.org>
Sent: Friday, September 24, 2004 3:56 AM
Subject: win32 sdk


> Zen,
>
> Now that we have new releases out, could we interest you in doing a new
> version of the win32 sdk? It's different from your directshow plugins,
> but is used by quite a few windows developers, especially in the game
> market, so I think it's worthwhile to maintain separately.
>

Does it have to be VC6 ? I don't have it anymore... and being 7 years old 
and probably close to be out of the support cycle... i would imagine most 
developers are already using 2002 or 2003... and just let the new version do 
a conversion of the vc6 project files (which isn't great, as many of the 
options are not available in VC6). The only reason i can imagine peopel are 
still using VC6 by choice is if there is some custom plug-in they must have 
which hasn't been updated to the newer versions.

I can definately do a VS2003 set of projects and solution files. In fact 
they are pretty much done already (though i haven't done projects for some 
of the tools)... i already have a solution in my project called 
XiphCoreLibs, which "just works".

I can fairly easily modify them to be a stand alone solution outside of my 
project.

> The idea is just to have a set of project files, examle code and
> pre-built dlls so people can immediately start using the library.
>

The main problem has always been the how the builds are distributed. Windows 
solutions are intended to be standalone, rather than, here's a bunch of 
libraries you figure out how they work together.

I don't know enough about subversion... but i'm pretty sure if someone can 
give me a hand with how externals work, i can create an sdk that will check 
out the solution files directly, and point subdirectories to the 
vorbis/speex/theora/ogg libraries in the repository, so when they check out 
the sdk they get...

WinSDK
-- Builds
-- Solutions
-- Libraries
----Vorbis
---- Speex
---- Theora
---- Ogg

And then it should "just work" with no fiddling around with paths and 
dependancies.

This is only necessary, for those who intend to use latest head versions... 
rather than a collection of distributed stable releases.

If all that's required is a .zip file containing the projects and solutions 
and .dls, without any subversion linkage... this can be done really easily, 
i can just create a distribution project directly out of my project with the 
layout shown above, and it will just automatically create the source 
distribution.

> And updated OggDropXP would be a nice side project from there.
>
> We've also had complaints about runtime linking issues and so on with
> the existing build, so it would be great to have someone who can
> actually verify this stuff to own the releases. Feel free to add support
> for other xiph codecs, libfishsound, or whatever, but I'd say a tidy
> updated vorbis release is the first priority.
>

Well speex/ogg/theora/vorbis are easy to do... flac is a bit more painful 
becuase of it's reliance on NASM... that's not going to be easily fixed.

> Would you be up for that? As you said, our support of win32 isn't great,
> and this is another way you can help. :)
>

Yep, sure... providing it is VS2003 projects and solutions... i'm going away 
for a week tomorrow, so i probably won't get to it by then... as i've got 
another release for directshow i hope to complete tonight... but if that 
goes smooth, i may even get at least a .zip distribution done before i 
leave.

Also.. for those worried about VS2003, the compiler is free to download, and 
also VS2005Express (still beta) (with IDE) which undoubtably will load 
VS2003 files is also free.

Zen.