Question about VLC build complexity and do cumentation (academic project – UNICAMP)

Hello VLC team,

My name is José Eduardo Rabelo, and I’m a Computer Engineering
undergraduate student at UNICAMP (University of Campinas, Brazil).

As part of a university course called Programming Systems Projects, my
group is searching for a way to simplify the compilation process of large
and dependency-heavy open-source software — with VLC as our case study.

During our attempts to build VLC on *macOS* and *Windows*, we found the
process quite complex, with many undocumented or outdated steps, especially
compared to Linux. This raised an academic and practical question for us:

“Is the current complexity of building VLC intentional — due to
architectural or dependency-management reasons — or simply a result of
historical evolution and limited documentation?”

Our goal is to understand the rationale behind the current build system
design, so that our project can assist new contributors without
oversimplifying what’s necessary.

If possible, could you share any insight into how the VLC team approaches
build automation, and whether there are ongoing efforts to simplify or
modernize it?

We deeply admire the VLC project and would like to make our work useful to
the community.

Best regards,
José Eduardo Rabelo
UNICAMP – University of Campinas, Brazil

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