[FFmpeg-devel] Removing DCE

Matt Oliver protogonoi at gmail.com
Fri Dec 16 04:48:16 EET 2016


Recently we have again received several patches that are trying to add
workarounds for ffmpegs use of DCE. This is not the first time this has
happened and wont be the last until a decision is made about the use of
DCE. So I think its time that we made a official decision on the use of
DCE. This is of course something that should be properly agreed upon by
developers going forward as different people have different opinions on the
matter so to help assist this I will summaries all of the previously made
arguments from both sides of the discussion.

For DCE:
1) Ends up with a horrible mess of ifdefs.
2) Disabled parts of code will not be checked for syntax.

Against DCE:
3) DCE is not actually specified in the C specification. So compilers are
actually being 100% compliant by not supporting it and should not be
expected to change just for ffmpegs use case.
4) Breaks debug and lto builds on msvc.
5) Breaks debug and lto builds on icl.
6) Issues with lto with Clang and Gold.
7) Other unspecified issues with debug builds

Rebuttals against above arguments:
8) There are already 3961 #ifs(not including header guards) in the code so
there is already a lot of code that doesn't use DCE. (In response to #1 for
DCE).
9) Avoiding #ifdefs is a personal opinion as to whether they are ugly or
not (some prefer ifdefs as IDEs will correctly highlight disabled
sections). Someones personal preference for what looks better should not be
justification to break supported configurations/compilers. (In response to
#1 for DCE).
10) There is --enable-random which is supposed to be used to find
configurations that don't compile. (in response to #2 for DCE).
11) Just because something compiles does not mean that it actually works,
relying on just syntax checking is dangerous as it gives false security as
the code is not actually being tested. (in response to #2 for DCE)
12) There are numerous FATE tests that should find all the configuration
errors. (in response to #2 for DCE)
12) MSVC is broken and we shouldn't support it so Microsoft are forced to
fix it (in response to #4 against DCE) - This point is countermanded by #3
against DCE and reported issues with other compilers as well.


Most of the above points were taken from peoples posts in the following
mailing list thread:
https://lists.ffmpeg.org/pipermail/ffmpeg-devel/2016-April/193437.html
https://ffmpeg.org/pipermail/ffmpeg-devel/2016-May/194115.html

Its my personal opinion that DCE should be removed from the code but this
is something I am aware will require a developer consensus and perhaps even
a vote. Stating something is broken is one thing so I will also put forward
a solution in that if it is agreed upon to remove DCE usage then I will
spend the time and effort to go through the existing code base and replace
DCE with appropriate #ifs.

Matt


More information about the ffmpeg-devel mailing list