-$Id: HACKING,v 1.1 2002/08/25 23:18:04 sam Exp $
+$Id$
Hacking vlc
===========
-You will need the following tools if you plan to use the CVS version of vlc:
+First
+-----
- - autoconf version 2.13 or later
- - automake version 1.4 or later
- - gettext version 0.11.5 or later
+ - Read this file
-After retrieving the CVS tree, you need to run the bootstrap script to
+ - Read the information present on http://developers.videolan.org/vlc/
+
+
+Requirements
+____________
+
+You will need the following tools if you plan to use the SVN version of vlc:
+
+ - autoconf version 2.50 or later
+
+ - automake version 1.5 (but 1.6 or later is recommended)
+
+ - gettext version 0.10.40 (but 0.11.3 or later is recommended)
+
+ - perl version 5.005 or later
+
+After retrieving the SVN tree, you need to run the bootstrap script to
generate all the files needed to build vlc. You can then run configure.
+Run ./configure --help for a description of the available options.
If you do not have the correct version of these tools, or if they are
simply not available for the operating system you plan to develop on,
-you can check out a CVS tree on an OS that provides these tools (such
+you can check out a SVN tree on an OS that provides these tools (such
as a recent Linux distribution), run bootstrap, and then copy the whole
tree to your retarded OS.
+There is a possibility that, at some point, automake might segfault. The
+reason is unsufficient stack size, and can be easily fixed with the
+`ulimit` command (or an equivalent) available in most shells. For instance
+on bash 2.0, the following command solves the automake crash on Mac OS X :
+ulimit -s 20000
+
+
+The bootstrap sequence
+----------------------
+
+The bootstrap script does the following actions:
+
+ - parse configure.ac for all Makefiles in the modules/ directory that need
+ to be generated, and look for available modules in the corresponding
+ Modules.am file. A module "foo" exists if there is a Modules.am file in
+ the modules/ directory which defines SOURCES_foo.
+
+ - create a top-level Modules.am file (which will be included by Makefile.am)
+ which contains additional build rules for modules, and includes all the
+ Modules.am files that were found in modules/
+
+ - create an m4/private.m4 from configure.ac, generating m4 macros that will
+ be needed by configure.ac.
+
+ - create a Makefile.am file for each Modules.am file found in modules/ .
+
+ - run autopoint (previously gettextize) to create an intl/ directory,
+ needed when libgettext is not available.
+
+ - run the usual aclocal, autoheader, automake and autoconf, which create
+ the various Makefile.in files from the corresponding Makefile.am and the
+ configure script from configure.ac.
+
+ - fix a few files in the vlc repository that may have been altered.
+
+
+How to add a module
+-------------------
+
+To add a module to the repository, just add its sources to a Modules.am
+file. If you add a new directory you will need to create a new Modules.am,
+inside that directory. Do not forget to add a corresponding
+Makefile line at the end of configure.ac for this new Modules.am file.
+
+To have the module built, you need to add a call to VLC_ADD_PLUGINS or
+VLC_ADD_BUILTINS to configure.ac with your new module name as argument.
+Look at other modules for guidelines on how to add build and linkage options.
+
+After changing configure.ac you will always need to rerun bootstrap and
+configure.
+
+
projects / vlc / blobdiff