Using Pre-built SRT lib for Windows from SRT

[ush-gan]

After install VCPKG, the installer is looking for vcpkg.json. Instead of building the SRT libs, is it possible to use the pre-built libraries for Windows from SRT.

[birme]

Hi @ush-gan, and thanks for raising this!

You're running into the Windows build path: on install, @eyevinn/srt clones and compiles libSRT from source before building the native N-API addon against it. That source build needs the full Windows toolchain — Visual Studio Build Tools (MSVC), CMake, and OpenSSL — and libSRT's Windows build pulls dependencies via vcpkg. That's a heavy prerequisite chain, so wanting to reuse a pre-built libSRT is very reasonable.

Two separate things here, worth teasing apart:

1. Reusing a pre-built libSRT instead of building it. Potentially feasible: the build script (scripts/build-srt-sdk.js) currently builds libSRT itself, and pointing the addon's link step at an already-installed libSRT would mean detecting/locating the lib rather than compiling it. There's no supported "bring your own libSRT" flag today, so this would be an enhancement to the build script + binding.gyp link paths.
2. Shipping pre-built binaries of this package (so no toolchain is needed at all) — e.g. via prebuildify / prebuild-install / node-pre-gyp. This is a recurring request and the smoothest fix for Windows users, but it's a maintainer-level decision: it adds a per-platform build matrix and release-pipeline complexity to maintain, versus the current build-from-source approach.

I'm flagging both to the maintainers as a feature request rather than deciding here. In the meantime, to build from source on Windows you'll need VS Build Tools, CMake, and OpenSSL installed and on PATH (SRT's Windows build docs: https://github.com/Haivision/srt/blob/master/docs/build/build-win.md).

If you're hitting a specific failure, could you share your OS version, CPU arch, Node.js + npm versions, CMake version, and the full npm install --verbose log?

Thanks again — pre-built binaries for Windows is squarely on our radar.

Triaged by the node-srt community triage bot — build-issue / platform-windows; the prebuilt-binary decision is escalated to a human maintainer.