Win32Compile Under Fedora

How to compile VLC media player for Windows.

Building Methods

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

Method	Documentation	Notes
Cross-compile with Mingw in a virtual machine.	Preferred method.
Cross-compile with Mingw under Fedora.

Yum is the basic installation tool for Fedora. Install packages (as root):

sudo yum install ''package-name1 package-name2 ...''

Using a virtual machine

Virtual Box is known to work for this approach.

sudo yum install VirtualBox-OSE

The basic Win32Compile is optimized for Ubuntu. It is simpler if you install the 32-bit version:

wget http://www.ubuntu.com/start-download?distro=desktop&bits=32&release=latest

Start the VirtualBox Manager GUI.

• Click on Machine / New... The "New Virtual Machine Wizard" will open.
• Click Next. Enter Ubuntu32 in the Name box.
• Set Base Memory Size to 1024MB. (Recommended.)
• Leave Start-up Disk box checked. Leave Create new hard disk radio button active.
• Choose VDI file type.
• Choose Dynamically allocated
• Choose Location Ubuntu32 and Size 8.00 GB
• Click "Create". This will exit the Wizard.
• Click "Create" again. This will create the virtual machine.
• Click Settings / Storage. The SATA Controller should show that Ubuntu32.vdi (your 8GB disk) is attached. The IDE Controller should show an empty attachment. Click on the Empty line. The Attributes label in the last column should read "CD/DVD Drive:" with a dropdown reading "IDE Secondary". To the right of that is a CD symbol. Click on that.
• Click on "Choose a virtual CD/DVD disk file..."
• Navigate to the Ubuntu server you just downloaded. Click Open. Your CD should now be attached to the IDE Controller. Click OK.
• Click on Start.

At this point, the virtual machine should boot and take you through the Ubuntu installation process. When it is complete, it will ask you to remove the CD and reboot.

• Click on Machine / Close ...
• Choose Power off the machine and click OK.
• Click on Settings / Storage
• Click on the Ubuntu CD attached to the IDE Controller
• Click on the CD symbol at the extreme right of the Attributes section.
• Choose Remove disk from virtual drive. Click OK
• Click on Start.

Now Ubuntu should start. From here you can follow the instructions on the main Win32Compile page.

Using Fedora

It is possible to compile the Windows 32-bit version under 64-bit Fedora. There are a few complications, as noted below.

Get the source code

First, change to a directory you will use for building. You must have write access to this directory. Then use git to get the source:

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

This will give you the VLC trunk. Alternative branches (technically forks) are listed at http://git.videolan.org. Scroll down to the vlc.git line and click on the "forks" link at the extreme right. This will give you a list of alternatives, which are in the vlc directory. So, for example, to choose the 2.0 fork, the command is:

git clone git://git.videolan.org/vlc/vlc-2.0.git

Next, change into the newly installed vlc-x.x directory. We will refer to this as the $VLCROOT directory:

export VLCROOT=`pwd`

Obtaining the toolchain

The mingw32 cross-compile tools are available in the default repository.

sudo yum install \
mingw32-gcc-c++ \
mingw32-gcc \
mingw32-pthreads \
mingw32-w32api \
mingw32-binutils \
mingw32-runtime \
mingw32-filesystem \
mingw32-cpp \
mingw32-dlfcn-static

Installing 32-bit Lua

By default, you will already have 64-bit Lua installed, because the yum/RPM packaging system depends on it. As a result, you will not be able to remove the 64-bit version. Furthermore, you may install the 32-bit binary libraries, but the 32-bit binary executables (lua and luac) will NOT install over the 64-bit ones. Here is how to work around that.

sudo yum install compat-readline5.i686 
yumdownloader lua.i686
sudo yum localinstall ./lua*.rpm

This installs the 32-bit libraries but not the executables. You have to manually extract and install the 32-bit versions

sudo yum install cpio
rpm2cpio lua*.rpm | cpio -idmv

Now you will have the files from the RPM package as a tree in your local directory. They have the same names and (relative) locations as the 64-bit versions, which is why yum refused to install them in the first place. So manually install them with the names lua32 and luac32:

sudo mv usr/bin/lua /usr/bin/lua32
sudo mv usr/bin/luac /usr/bin/luac32
rm -rf usr
rm -f lua*.rpm

Tell the build system where to find the 32-bit versions:

export LUA=/usr/bin/lua32
export LUAC=/usr/bin/luac32

Installing Qt and Correcting Version Mismatch

Install the qt-devel package, which gives you moc, uic and rcc for both Qt3 and Qt4. The executables for Qt4 are named moc-qt4, uic-qt4 and rcc.

sudo yum install qt-devel

Your version of moc needs to match the version used in the VLC sources.

moc -v

Note: pre-built Windows Qt is 4.6.0 but the yum installed version for Linux is actually 4.6.3... If it is problematic try to downgrade the qt installed versions:

tools

You will also need:

• lua5.1
• all autotools: libtool, automake, autoconf, autopoint, make, gettext
• pkg-config
• git
• subversion
• cmake, cvs if you want to rebuild contribs
• zip [for creating .zip package], p7zip [for .7z package], nsis [for .exe auto-installer].

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:

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

or, if you want to compile the contribs yourself and are feeling adventurous and have lots of time to burn,

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

Linux 64-bit

If you are on Linux 64-bit, you MUST remove some files:

 $ rm -f ../i586-mingw32msvc/bin/moc ../i586-mingw32msvc/bin/uic ../i586-mingw32msvc/bin/rcc

In addition, install the qt4-tools package.

Fix your contrib path

If your Mingw prefix is not i586-mingw32msvc (you are NOT on Debian or Ubuntu), create a symlink to contribs:

 $ ln -sf ../i586-mingw32msvc ../i486-mingw32

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 configuration:

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

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

Alternatively, you can run configure manually:

$ ../configure --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 build self-contained VLC packages.

You may also add the ndis tools and everything needed by the make package-win32* targets:

sudo yum --verbose --noplugins install \
mingw32-nsiswrapper \
mingw32-nsis \
zip \
p7zip \ 
lua

Use the following make rules:

Command	Description
make package-win-common	Creates a subdirectory named vlc-x.x.x with all the binaries. You can run VLC directly from this directory.
make package-win-strip (might be package-win32-strip)	Same as above but will create 'stripped' binaries (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!