Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
72 lines (53 loc) · 3.25 KB

README-old.md

File metadata and controls

72 lines (53 loc) · 3.25 KB
Raw

SRT Installer for Windows

SRT is the Secure Reliable Transport protocol.

This repository contains scripts to build a binary installer for libsrt on Windows systems for Visual Studio applications using SRT.

This repository does not contain any third-party source code, neither libsrt nor any of its dependencies. It contains only scripts and configuration files which download third-party source code when necessary and build it.

Rationale

The SRT library is easily compiled on Unix systems. Most Linux distros already include a package for libsrt or are about to do it. On macOS, libsrt is available through Homebrew, the macOS installer for open-source projects.

But, on Windows systems, including libsrt in an application is a pain, a huge pain. The intructions for building libsrt on Windows in the README file are sloppy, not to say lousy.

However, serious software engineering requires build automation and continuous integration. How can you setup build automation for a Windows application using libsrt? The answer is simple, you can't.

This project tries to solves this issue by providing tools and scripts to build a binary installer for a development environment for libsrt, namely C/C++ header files and static libraries for 64 and 32 bits applications, in release and debug configurations.

Why not providing libsrt DLL's in addition to static libraries? It is a choice which may change. On Windows, libsrt relies on OpenSSL. If a Windows application is linked against a libsrt DLL, deploying this application means embedding and deploying at least two third-party DLL's in addition to libsrt DLL's. This complicates the deployment and creates risks of inconsistencies. With static libraries, the application is fully autonomous and no third party DLL is necessary.

Building Windows applications with libsrt

After installing the libsrt binary, an environment variable named LIBSRT is defined to the installation root (typically C:\Program Files (x86)\libsrt).

In this directory, there is a Visual Studio property file named libsrt.props. Simply reference this property file in your Visual Studio project to use libsrt.

You can also do that manually by editing the application project file (the XML file named with a .vcxproj extension). Add the following line just before the end of the file:

  <Import Project="$(LIBSRT)\libsrt.props"/>

Building the installer

The binary installers are available in the release section of this project.

If you want to rebuild the installer yourself, follow these instructions. The first two steps need to be executed once only. Only the last step needs to be repeated each time a new version of libsrt is available.

  • Prerequisite 1: Install OpenSSL for Windows, both 64 and 32 bits. This can be done automatically by running the PowerShell script install-openssl.ps1.
  • Prerequisite 2: Install NSIS, the NullSoft Installation Scripting system. This can be done automatically by running the PowerShell script install-nsis.ps1.
  • Build the libsrt installer by running the PowerShell script build-all.ps1.

That's all. It's just automation...