Win32Compile
This page will help you to compile VLC media player for Windows.
Contents
Building Methods
If you want to build VLC from source, you have several choices:
Method | Documentation | Notes |
---|---|---|
MinGW on Linux | Obtaining the toolchain | Preferred method involving cross-compilation from Linux. On computers running Microsoft Windows, a virtual machine is necessary to run Linux. |
MSYS+MinGW on Windows | Compile with MSys | Native compilation method. MSYS is a minimal build environment to compile Unix-style projects directly on Microsoft Windows. This is not officially supported by VideoLAN. Best of luck. |
Cygwin on Windows | Compile with Cygwin | Cygwin method. Cygwin emulates a POSIX environment to compile on Microsoft Windows. This is error-prone and slow and therefore not recommended. |
Obtaining the cross-compilation toolchain
Compiler and binary toolchain
Mingw-w64
To compile VLC for Windows (32-bits or 64-bits), the Mingw-w64 toolchain is required:
- Debian/Ubuntu: run
apt-get install gcc-mingw-w64-i686 g++-mingw-w64-i686 mingw-w64-tools
For the 64-bit version, this becomes:
apt-get install gcc-mingw-w64-x86-64 g++-mingw-w64-x86-64 mingw-w64-tools
Development tools
You will also need:
- lua (5.1 or 5.2)
- all autotools: libtool, automake, autoconf, autopoint, make, gettext,pkg-config
- qt4-dev-tools, qt5-default (or qt4-default if qt plugin build fails)
- git, subversion cmake, cvs if you want to rebuild contribs
- wine-dev for creating Win32 packages
- zip [for creating .zip package], p7zip [for .7z package], nsis [for .exe auto-installer], bzip2 [for 'make prebuild]
apt-get install gcc-mingw-w64-x86-64 g++-mingw-w64-x86-64 mingw-w64-tools lua5.2 libtool automake autoconf autopoint make gettext pkg-config qt4-dev-tools qt5-default git subversion cmake cvs wine64-development-tools zip p7zip nsis bzip2 yasm ragel ant default-jdk protobuf-compiler dos2unix
Host triplet
A number of example commands below include the identifier of the toolchain. This value is essential: it instructs the build system to use the correct toolchain and compile the program for Windows. Without the value, the build system will perform a native compilation for Linux (or whatever your computer runs). With an incorrect value, the build will fail.
This is known as the host triplet, although it's more of a pair than a triplet in the case of Mingw. The exact value depends on your installation of the toolchain. Notably on Debian/Ubuntu, these values must be used:
- i686-w64-mingw32 for Windows 32-bits, using the Mingw-w64 toolchain
- x86_64-w64-mingw32 for Windows 64-bits, using the Mingw-w64 toolchain
- i586-mingw32msvc for Windows 32-bits, using the Mingw32 toolchain
Again, you MUST substitute the value in the following command snippets.
Get the source code
$ git clone http://git.videolan.org/git/vlc.git vlc
See Git for more information.
Go into the VLC directory
$ cd vlc
Prepare 3rd party libraries
Before compiling VLC, you need lots of other libraries. Here is how to get them:
Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Mingw32-w64 toolchain has an issue with accepting explicit PKG_CONFIG_PATH. Patch mentioned in https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mingw-w64/+bug/1327242 needs to be applied to /usr/share/pkg-config-crosswrapper
$ mkdir -p contrib/win32 $ cd contrib/win32 $ ../bootstrap --host=i686-w64-mingw32 $ make prebuilt
or, if you want to compile the contribs yourself and are feeling adventurous and have lots of time to burn,
# apt-get install subversion yasm cvs cmake ragel
$ mkdir -p contrib/win32 $ cd contrib/win32 $ ../bootstrap --host=i686-w64-mingw32 $ make fetch $ make
Linux 64-bit
If you are on Linux 64-bit, you SHOULD remove some files, or install the lib32 packages (ia32-libs, multilibs, etc...)
$ rm -f ../i686-w64-mingw32/bin/moc ../i686-w64-mingw32/bin/uic ../i686-w64-mingw32/bin/rcc
Fix your contrib path
If your host triplet is not i686-w64-mingw32 (you are not compiling for Debian or Ubuntu), create a symlink to contribs:
$ ln -sf insert_your_host_triplet_here ../i686-w64-mingw32
So, for example:
$ ln -sf x86_64-w64-mingw32 ../i686-w64-mingw32
Notice that there is no ../
before the host triplet. This is intentional, and if done properly, you should see a functioning symbolic link created in the parent directory (try ls -l ..
and you should see i686-w64-mingw32 -> x86_64-w64-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
Set your PKG_CONFIG_LIBDIR
$ export PKG_CONFIG_LIBDIR=$HOME/vlc/contrib/i686-w64-mingw32/lib/pkgconfig $ export PKG_CONFIG_PATH_CUSTOM=$PKG_CONFIG_LIBDIR (for Archlinux only)
Execute the build configuration script:
$ ../extras/package/win32/configure.sh --host=i686-w64-mingw32 --build=x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
N.B.: Use the host and build tuples respectively corresponding to your cross-compilation toolchain and build system respectively. The example above assumes you are compiling for Windows OS and Intel 686 architecture, and the build system is GNU/Linux OS and x86 64-bits architecture. See above for list of common values.
Also, if you have a problem here (such as an error about Library dvdread), see the Talk page.
Alternatively, you can run configure manually:
$ ../configure --host=i686-w64-mingw32 --build=x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
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 with 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
|
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!
Extra information
Static compilation of plugins
You might want to use the following script to enforce static compilation. Run as root, and use at your own risk.
#!/bin/sh # This script enforces statically linking of libgcc, libstdc++-6, and libpthread, # without needing to rebuild gcc and mingw-w64 from scratch. # -static-libgcc -static-libstdc++ flags can not be used in a libtool build system, # as libtool removes flags that it doesn't understand. move() { [ -f $1 ] || return 1 mkdir -p old/ mv -v $* old/ return 0 } for x in i686 x86_64 do library_path_list=`$x-w64-mingw32-gcc -v /dev/null 2>&1 | grep ^LIBRARY_PATH|cut -d= -f2|sort|uniq` IFS=':' for i in $library_path_list do cd $i move libstdc++-6.dll libstdc++.dll.a libgcc_s.a libgcc_s_sjlj-1.dll && ln -s libgcc_eh.a libgcc_s.a move libpthread.dll.a libwinpthread.dll.a move libwinpthread-1.dll [ -d ../bin ] && cd ../bin && move libwinpthread-1.dll done done exit 0
Mingw32
Up to versions 2.0.x, VLC was compiled with the older mingw32 toolchain, which only supports 32-bits Windows. If you have problems with mingw-w64, you can try mingw32 instead:
- Debian/Ubuntu: run
apt-get install gcc-mingw32 mingw32-binutils
. Note that at least version 3.17 of Mingw32 is required, which Debian does not provide. You may obtain mingw32-runtime-3.17 here. - Gentoo users can
emerge crossdev && crossdev mingw32
- ArchLinux users can
pacman -S mingw32-gcc
- Fedora users should read Win32Compile Under Fedora
- Other Linux systems may attempt http://www.mingw.org/wiki/LinuxCrossMinGW