How to build libvmaf.lib for use with Visual Studio

[mark-samuelson]

I am trying to build libvmaf so I can use the library from a Visual Studio 2022 project.

Following the directions here https://github.com/Netflix/vmaf/blob/master/resource/doc/windows.md, I can build vmaf.exe, but I don't get a libvmaf.lib file, just libvmaf.a.

From this issue thread, #971, I tried add "--backend vs" to the meson setup command, and that appears to work, but when I then call "meson install -C libvmaf/build" I get this error:

Activating VS 17.2.6
Only ninja backend is supported to rebuild the project before installation.

ERROR: File 'src/libvmaf.a' could not be found

There is no build.ninja file created by the "meson configure" step, so running ninja instead of "meson install" does not work.
There is a visual studio solution that is created, but it has numerous errors, mostly "cannot open input file "pthread.h"

Is it possible to build the library for windows?

[1480c1]

As far as I know, unless you are able to get a pthread wrapper for Visual Studio, you probably will not be able to build this library. You will need to see if you can find a preferred pthread wrapper library for MSVC, as I do not think you can use mingw-w64's winpthreads with msvc.