Win32Compile

How to compile VLC media player for Windows.

Building Methods

If you want to build VLC from source, you have several choices:

Method	Documentation	Notes
Cross-compile with Mingw on Linux	This page	Preferred method (uses cross compilation). On Windows, you should do it in a virtual machine.
Native compilation with MSYS+MINGW	Win32CompileMSYSNew	Native compilation method. MSYS is a minimal build environment to compile Unixish projects under Microsoft Windows.
Native compilation with cygwin	Win32CompileCygwinNew	Build using cygwin as your compile environment. Error prone, and slow.

Obtaining the toolchain

Each build method requires its own toolchain:

• Debian/Ubuntu users can apt-get install gcc-mingw32 mingw32-binutils. 
• Gentoo users can emerge crossdev && crossdev mingw32
• ArchLinux users can pacman -S mingw32-gcc
• Fedora users should read Win32CompileFedora13
• Other Linux systems may attempt http://www.mingw.org/wiki/LinuxCrossMinGW
• Native-compile with MSYS+MINGW, should read the documentation
• Native-compile with Cygwin, should read the documentation

Get the source code

$ git clone git://git.videolan.org/vlc.git

Prepare 3rd party libraries

Before compiling VLC, you need lots of other libraries. Here is how to get them:

 $ cd contrib
 $ mkdir -p win32 && cd win32
 $ ../bootstrap --host=i586-mingw32msvc
 $ make prebuilt

Go Back

Go back to the VLC source directory:

 $ cd ../..

Configuring the build

Bootstrap

First, prepare the tree:

 $ ./bootstrap

Configure

Then, you can to configure the build with the ./configure script.

Create a subfolder:

 $ mkdir win32 && cd win32

Use the standard configure:

$ ../extras/package/win32/configure.sh --host=i586-mingw32msvc

NB: use YOUR Xcompiling prefix here, like i486-mingw32

or just run configure manually:

$ ../configure --with-contrib=/usr/win32 --host=i586-mingw32msvc

See '../configure --help' for more information.

Building VLC

Once configured, to build VLC, just run:

 $ make

Packaging VLC

Once the compilation is done, you can either run VLC directly from the source tree or you can build self-contained VLC packages with the following make rules:

Command	Description
make package-win32-strip (might be package-win-strip)	Creates a subdirectory named vlc-x.x.x with all the binaries 'stripped' (that is, smallest size, unusable with a debugger)
make package-win32-7zip	Same as above but will package the directory in a 7z file.
make package-win32-zip	Same as above but will package the directory in a zip file.
make package-win32	Same as above but will also create an auto-installer package. You must have NSIS installed in its default location for this to work.

Well done—you're ready to use VLC!