Win32Compile

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From http://developers.videolan.org/vlc/vlc/INSTALL.win32 

$Id: INSTALL.win32 15707 2006-05-22 09:42:08Z xtophe $
INSTALL file for the Windows9x/Me/NT4/2k/XP version of the VLC media player

Before you start

One common desire that leads people to want to rebuild VLC is to "rebuild a debug version" or "add printf()s", but this is not strictly necessary, as VLC includes a debug logging feature by default. If you are using a binary release (or have already built VLC), just run 'vlc.exe' and select "Messages..." from the "Tools" menu.

You can also run VLC from the Windows command-line interpreter, cmd.exe (a.k.a. "DOS window"), in which case you'll be able to use the command-line arguments. You can obtain a list of these command line arguments by typing 'vlc --help' or 'vlc --help --advanced'.

To store a debug log of the current VLC session, you can use 'vlc -vvv --extraintf=logger'. You will end-up with a vlc-log.txt file in your current directory.

Building VLC from source

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

Method Documentation Notes
Cross-compile with mingw32 on GNU/Linux None Preferred method (uses cross compilation)
Native-compile with MSYS+MINGW Win32CompileMSYS MSYS is a minimal build environment to compile Unixish projects under Microsoft Windows. It provides all the commonly-required Unix tools (like sh, gmake, and so forth).
Native-compile with Cygwin Win32CompileCygwinNew Working native compilation method
Native-compile with Microsoft Visual C++ None Not advised.

Even though VLC includes some MSVC project files, this method is advised only if you just want to experiment/play with some basic functionality in VLC. VLC depends on a lot of third-party libraries and building them in MSVC is inconvenient (and in some cases, impossible).
If you want to run VLC under the MSVC debugger, use --fast-mutex --win9x-cv-method=1 because the debugger usually loses signals sent by PulseEvent().

Obtaining the build tools

Each build method requires its own toolchain:

Method Notes
Cross-compile with mingw32 on GNU/Linux
Native-compile with Cygwin Install Cygwin, adding the optional gcc-g++, gcc-mingw, mingw-runtime and win32-api packages from the Devel category.
Native-compile Nightlies (GIT) with Cygwin Install Cygwin, adding the optional components that are mentioned here.
Native-compile with MSYS+MINGW Download and install the latest MSYS, MSYS-DTK, and MINGW from http://www.mingw.org/download.shtml. Begin with the MSYS auto-installer, then extract MINGW into C:\MSYS\1.0\MINGW. You also have to remember to remove the make utility included with MINGW as it conflicts with the one from MSYS (just rename or remove C:\MSYS\1.0\MINGW\BIN\MAKE.EXE).

Saving time by using pre-built libraries

VLC requires other open source projects to provide some features (like AC3 audio decoding and MPEG-4 video decoding). A complete list of required libraries from these projects can be found at http://developers.videolan.org/vlc/. Depending on your needs, you must either build your own versions of these libraries or use VLC's convenient pre-built versions.

If you feel you must build these libraries from source, the blessed source code may be found at http://download.videolan.org/pub/testing/contrib/. An automated way of building the contrib libraries is provided in extra/contrib. It will download, configure, and build the libraries. See the extras/contrib/README for more info.

If you want to save yourself time and energy by using the pre-built versions of these libraries, you may download them from ftp://ftp.videolan.org/pub/vlc/version/win32/contrib-yyyymmdd-win32-version-bin-gcc-gccversion-only.tar.bz2 . The pre-built versions will only work with MINGW or Cygwin. Note that the version you download must match that of the MINGW compiler, i586-mingw32msvc-gcc, which you can verify by typing 'i586-mingw32msvc-gcc --ver'.

There are two installation strategies:

Location Command Advantages Disadvantages
Install the pre-built libraries into the Cygwin standard directories (/usr/win32/*) tar jxf contrib-20061122-win32-bin-gcc-3.4.5-only.tar.bz2 -C / (Note the "-C /"!)
  • Shorter initial setup time
  • May conflict with other headers/libraries in the standard directories
  • Difficult to get rid of if you want to free up space or to upgrade to the next version of the pre-built libraries (Installing over the top of older versions is highly discouraged!)
Install the pre-built libraries into a project-specific directory (e.g., D:\VLC) tar jxf contrib-20061122-win32-bin-gcc-3.4.5-only.tar.bz2 -C /cygdrive/d/VLC
  • No conflicts with other projects built under Cygwin
  • Easy to get rid of if you want to free up space or to upgrade to the next version of the pre-built libraries
  • For multi-person projects, easy to put under revision control to ensure all project members are using the correct pre-built versions
  • Requires that you set CPPFLAGS, LDFLAGS appropriately when building
  • Requires that you modify hard-coded paths in the pre-built libraries (see below)

If installing into a project-specific directory, you must modify some hard-coded paths in the pre-build libraries as follows: 

CONTRIBS=/cygdrive/d/VLC
for file in $CONTRIBS/bin/*-config $CONTRIBS/lib/*.la ; do
	perl -i.bak -p -e 's|/usr/win32|$ENV{"CONTRIBS"}|g' $file
done

Configuring the build

Once you've got all the files you need in place, you need to configure the build with the configure script. In the following examples, assume that the third-party libraries are installed in $CONTRIBS. If installed in the Cygwin standard directories, use export CONTRIBS=/usr/win32. Otherwise use export CONTRIBS=/cygdrive/d/VLC.

If you are cross-compiling under GNU/Linux, you can use something along these lines: 

 ./bootstrap && \
 export PKG_CONFIG_LIBDIR=$CONTRIBS/lib/pkgconfig \
 CPPFLAGS="-I$CONTRIBS/include -I$CONTRIBS/include/ebml" CXXCPP=i586-mingw32msvc-cpp \
 LDFLAGS=-L$CONTRIBS/lib \
 CC=i586-mingw32msvc-gcc CXX=i586-mingw32msvc-g++
 ./configure --host=i586-mingw32msvc --build=i386-linux \
     --disable-gtk \
     --enable-nls --enable-sdl --with-sdl-config-path=$CONTRIBS/bin \
     --enable-ffmpeg --with-ffmpeg-mp3lame --with-ffmpeg-faac \
     --with-ffmpeg-zlib --enable-faad --enable-flac --enable-theora \
     --with-wx-config-path=$CONTRIBS/bin \
     --with-freetype-config-path=$CONTRIBS/bin \
     --with-fribidi-config-path=$CONTRIBS/bin \
     --with-libgcrypt-prefix=$CONTRIBS \
     --enable-live555 --with-live555-tree=$CONTRIBS/live.com \
     --enable-caca --with-caca-config-path=$CONTRIBS/bin \
     --with-xml2-config-path=$CONTRIBS/bin \
     --with-dvdnav-config-path=$CONTRIBS/bin \
     --disable-cddax --disable-vcdx --enable-goom \
     --enable-twolame --enable-dvdread \
     --enable-debug

If you are using cygwin, you can build VLC with or without the POSIX emulation layer. Without is usually better and with POSIX emulation hasn't been tested in over a year. So to build without the emulation layer, use something like this: 

 ./bootstrap && \
 export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=$CONTRIBS/lib/pkgconfig \
 CPPFLAGS="-I$CONTRIBS/include -I$CONTRIBS/include/ebml" CXXCPP=$CPPFLAGS \
 LDFLAGS=-L$CONTRIBS/lib \
 CC='gcc -mno-cygwin' CXX='g++ -mno-cygwin' \
 ./configure \
     --disable-gtk \
     --enable-nls --enable-sdl --with-sdl-config-path=$CONTRIBS/bin \
     --enable-ffmpeg --with-ffmpeg-mp3lame --with-ffmpeg-faac \
     --with-ffmpeg-zlib --enable-faad --enable-flac --enable-theora \
     --with-wx-config-path=$CONTRIBS/bin \
     --with-freetype-config-path=$CONTRIBS/bin \
     --with-fribidi-config-path=$CONTRIBS/bin \
     --enable-live555 --with-live555-tree=$CONTRIBS/live.com \
     --enable-caca --with-caca-config-path=$CONTRIBS/bin \
     --with-xml2-config-path=$CONTRIBS/bin \
     --with-dvdnav-config-path=$CONTRIBS/bin \
     --disable-cddax --disable-vcdx --enable-goom \
     --enable-twolame --enable-dvdread \
     --enable-debug

If you want to use the emulation layer, then just omit CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS. You're on your own, though.

If you are compiling with MSYS/MINGW, then you can use something along those lines: 

 ./bootstrap && \
 export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=$CONTRIBS/lib/pkgconfig \
 CPPFLAGS="-I$CONTRIBS/include -I$CONTRIBS/include/ebml" CXXCPP=$CPPFLAGS \
 LDFLAGS=-L$CONTRIBS/lib \
 ./configure \
     --disable-gtk \
     --enable-nls --enable-sdl --with-sdl-config-path=$CONTRIBS/bin \
     --enable-ffmpeg --with-ffmpeg-mp3lame --with-ffmpeg-faac \
     --with-ffmpeg-zlib --enable-faad --enable-flac --enable-theora \
     --with-wx-config-path=$CONTRIBS/bin \
     --with-freetype-config-path=$CONTRIBS/bin \
     --with-fribidi-config-path=$CONTRIBS/bin \
     --enable-caca --with-caca-config-path=$CONTRIBS/bin \
     --with-xml2-config-path=$CONTRIBS/bin \
     --with-dvdnav-config-path=$CONTRIBS/bin \
     --disable-cddax --disable-vcdx --enable-goom \
     --enable-twolame --enable-dvdread \
     --disable-mkv \
     --enable-debug

If you have used the "extras/contrib" way, you don't need to specify CFLAGS, LDFLAGS and --with-foo-config-path=. 

./bootstrap && \
 ./configure \
     --disable-gtk \
     --enable-nls --enable-sdl \
     --enable-ffmpeg --enable-faad --enable-flac --enable-theora \
     --disable-cddax --disable-vcdx --enable-goom \
     --enable-twolame --enable-dvdread \
     --enable-mkv --enable-caca --enable-live555\
     --enable-debug

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

Building VLC

Once configured, to build VLC, just run 'make'.

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-base Creates a subdirectory named vlc-x.x.x with all the binaries 'stripped' (that is, smallest size, unusable with a debugger)
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!

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