% libsndfile for MSVC

About

Static libsndfile for use with Microsoft Visual C++, ported by LoRd_MuldeR <[email protected]>

Details

Libsndfile is a C library for reading and writing files containing sampled sound (such as MS Windows WAV and the Apple/SGI AIFF format) through one standard library interface. Unfortunately, the "official" version of libsndfile does not currently support building the library with Microsoft Visual C++ (MSVC). It is still possible to build a Windows DLL of libsndfile with MinGW/GCC and then link the MinGW-compiled DLL against your MSVC-compiled program files. However, to the best of my knowledge, this method does not work if you intend to link libsndfile as a static library! At least I never got it to work ;-)

The purpose of this repository is providing solution/project files that can be used to compile the latest version of libsndfile under MSVC, resulting in a "native" MSVC library that allows for static linking with MSVC-compiled programs. The code in this repository is identical to the "official" libsndfile codebase, except that solution/project files for MSVC have been added and that config.h has been adjusted. Furthermore, a few compatibility (build) fixes were required for MSVC, some of which were backported from the Qt Framework. In my tests, the MSVC binary of libsndfile is only slightly slower than the MinGW one.

My project/solution files have been tested to build smoothly under Visual Studio 2013 (MSVC 12.0) or 2015 (MSVC 14.0).

Legal Notice

Libsndfile was created by Erik de Castro Lopo <[email protected]> and is released under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License. For details, please refer to the official libsndfile web-site!

Support for Ogg, Vorbis and FLAC is enabled using "extra" libraries created by Monty <[email protected]> and the rest of the Xiph.org Foundation. Those libraries are released under the "BSD-style" license.

Warning

Even though libsndfile is released under the GNU Lesser General Public License, which explicitly does allow linking the library (i.e. libsndfile) against proprietary programs, this is only applicable as long as the library (i.e. libsndfile) remains separate from the proprietary portion of the program – in the form of a shared library. However, as soon as the library (i.e. libsndfile) is linked statically into your program, your program as a whole must be released under the GNU General Public License!

Build Prerequisites

In order to build libsndfile-MSVC with Vorbis and FLAC support enabled, you need the "extra" libraries by Xiph.org:

BaseDirectory\
├─ libsndfile-MSVC\
│  ├─ libsndfile_VS2015.sln
│  ├─ libsndfile_VS2015.vcxproj
│  └─ [...]
└─ Prerequisites\
   └─ XiphAudioLibs\
      ├─ include\
      │  ├─ FLAC\
      │  │  ├─ stream_decoder.h
      │  │  ├─ stream_encoder.h
      │  │  └─ metadata.h
      │  ├─ ogg\
      │  │  ├─ ogg.h
      │  │  └─ os_types.h
      │  └─ vorbis\
      │     ├─ codec.h
      │     ├─ vorbisenc.h
      │     └─ vorbisfile.h
      └─ lib\
         └─ Win32\
            └─ static\
               ├─ libFLAC_static.v140_xp.lib
               ├─ libogg_static.v140_xp.lib
               └─ libvorbis_static.v140_xp.lib

Source Code

The source code of libsndfile for MSVC is available from our Git mirrors:

• https://github.com/lordmulder/libsndfile-MSVC.git – [Browse]

• https://bitbucket.org/muldersoft/libsndfile-msvc.git – [Browse]

• https://gitlab.com/lord_mulder/libsndfile-MSVC.git – [Browse]

e.o.f.