[mythtv] Dynamically loading libdvdcss on macOS

[John Hoyt]

On Wed, Jul 23, 2025 at 9:53 PM Scott Theisen <scott.the.elm at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On 2025/07/23 18:02, Nigel Pearson wrote:
>
>
> On 24 Jul 2025, at 3:34 am, Scott Theisen <scott.the.elm at gmail.com>
> <scott.the.elm at gmail.com> asked:
>
> MythTV's copy of libdvdread has customizations for finding libdvdcss on
> macOS.  I think this is related to packaging?  Does anyone know if this
> customization is still necessary?
>
>
>
> Necessary?
>
> 1) I doubt anyone still has a DVD drive capable Mac :-)
>
>
> They could have disk images without CSS stripped and there are external
> (USB) DVD drives.
>
> 2) Most users probably use something like MacPorts,
> which does its own dependency install locations?
>
>
>
> However, a quick look at a standalone binary:
>
>
> https://sourceforge.net/projects/mythtvformacosx/files/v36/macOS%2013%20Ventura/MythFrontend-x86_64-macOS13-v36-with-plugins.dmg/download
>
> shows DVD & related libraries:
>
> % ls mythfrontend.app/Contents/Frameworks/ | grep -E 'dvd|css|blu|udf'
>
> libbluray.2.dylib
>
> libmythdvdnav.36-36.dylib
>
> libudfread.1.dylib
>
>
>
> so unless we are removing that feature,
> something similar to my old ugliness has to stay?
>
>
> That bundle doesn't have libdvdcss.2.dylib, so there is no reason to
> search extra locations when it won't be found there.
>
> It looks like only the deprecated packaging scripts for macOS in
> https://github.com/MythTV/packaging/ do anything with libdvdcss.
>
> So the question is really: do we want to support bundling libdvdcss on
> macOS or will libdvdcss only be found if it is in the normal search path
> for dlopen()?
>

Surprisingly, I actually do have a USB blu-ray drive on one of my macs.
It's been a long while since I've used it...

Both homebrew and macports have libdvdcss available.  I'm not sure why I
don't bundle it currently, probably because I rarely use my mac for dvds or
blu rays.  Alternatively I may have hit a snag a while back and never
revisited it.

https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/libdvdcss#default
https://ports.macports.org/port/libdvdcss/


Homebrew stores the lib in the cellar which is annoying but workable while
macports puts it in the usual place
 % brew list libdvdcss

/opt/homebrew/Cellar/libdvdcss/1.4.3/include/dvdcss/ (2 files)
/opt/homebrew/Cellar/libdvdcss/1.4.3/lib/libdvdcss.2.dylib
/opt/homebrew/Cellar/libdvdcss/1.4.3/lib/pkgconfig/libdvdcss.pc
/opt/homebrew/Cellar/libdvdcss/1.4.3/lib/ (2 other files)
/opt/homebrew/Cellar/libdvdcss/1.4.3/sbom.spdx.json
/opt/homebrew/Cellar/libdvdcss/1.4.3/share/doc/ (5 files)


% port contents libdvdcss

Port libdvdcss @1.4.3_0 contains:

  /opt/local/include/dvdcss/dvdcss.h
  /opt/local/include/dvdcss/version.h
  /opt/local/lib/libdvdcss.2.dylib
  /opt/local/lib/libdvdcss.a
  /opt/local/lib/libdvdcss.dylib
  /opt/local/lib/pkgconfig/libdvdcss.pc
  /opt/local/share/doc/libdvdcss/AUTHORS
  /opt/local/share/doc/libdvdcss/COPYING
  /opt/local/share/doc/libdvdcss/ChangeLog
  /opt/local/share/doc/libdvdcss/NEWS
  /opt/local/share/doc/libdvdcss/README


My vote would be to remove the workaround and add whatever search path is
necessary to locate libdvdcss at build and run time.  This would require an
update of ansible playbooks and updates to cmake to help it find libdvdcss
on homebrew.  The latest build script bundles (and signs) the app via
cmake, so it should automatically pick up any libdvdcss.dylib files
linked during build while bundling.
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