[cairo] Cairo and Pixman *.LIB files for After Effects SDK

[Simon Richter]

Hi James,

On Thu, Dec 19, 2019 at 02:37:51PM +0000, james smith wrote:

> I've tried following the instructions on your website, but they seem to
> compile DLL files not LIB

On Windows, .lib files are used by dependent projects, while .dll files are
used at runtime. It is possible to build either a "static" .lib file
containing the whole library, or a .dll file along with a small "stub" .lib
file containing the code to load and use the .dll file.

The Cairo build process can generate both variants, typical file sizes for
a release build are

 - static .lib - 4 MB
 - stub .lib - 100 kB
 - .dll - 1 MB

You can probably lift binaries from my machine[1], but I can't make much of
a guarantee that they work, because I haven't tested them in ages. These
are statically linked against pixman because I'm lazy, and dynamically
linked against zlib and libpng (so you need the .dll files from these
projects as well, they are linked from the build log).

Because zlib/libpng/pixman/cairo are C based, reusing binaries should work
across compilers, but this wouldn't work for C++ code (Also, you shouldn't
trust binaries provided by strangers from the Internet).

Medium term, you should probably try to get self-sufficient with the build
process, but this should help you out getting started. My build process
uses gmake and a few patches to the build system though, so that's maybe
not the best starting point.

   Simon

[1] https://jenkins.simonrichter.eu/job/windows-cairo-msvc/