MacOSCompile
This is an howto to compile VLC media player on Mac OS X, focused on VLC 1.2 and newer.
Contents
Pre-requisites
Apple
- You need at least MacOSX 10.5.
10.6 is strongly recommended, though. - Developer Tools from Apple from http://developer.apple.com/technology/xcode.html
Xcode 3 and Xcode4 should be fine.
Check that the LLVM GCC 4.2 compiler is installed:
$ gcc --version
Git
You need to get Git to clone VLC.
You can use homebrew as:
$ brew install git
Get the source code
$ git clone git://git.videolan.org/vlc.git
Additional development tools
You need all the autoconf tools to build it correctly.
This is automated for you:
$ cd vlc/extras/tools $ ./bootstrap $ make $ cd ../..
SDK selection and 32/64 bits
SDK selection
If you want to use the 10.6 SDK (your VLC will only run on 10.6 and more recent computers):
$ export OSX_VERSION=10.6
You can do the same for 10.5, but please check that you have MacOSX10.5.sdk installed in /Developer/SDKs/ .
32/64bits selection
The instructions below will build a 64 bits binary using 10.6 (Leopard) SDK. This is reflected by using host and build variables x86_64-apple-darwin10.
This "triplet" is ARCHITECTURE-apple-SYSTEM.
ARCHITECTURE
x86_64represents Intel 64bits.i686represents Intel 32bits.powerpcrepresents PowerPC 32bits.
SDK SYSTEM
darwin9represents MacOSX 10.5.darwin10represents MacOSX 10.6.
So to make a PowerPC build, you would use powerpc-apple-darwin9. So to make a intel32 build for 10.5+, you would use i686-apple-darwin9. So to make a intel64 build for 10.6+, you would use x86_64-apple-darwin10.
Prepare 3rd party libraries
Before compiling VLC, you need lots of other libraries. Here is how to get them:
$ cd contrib $ mkdir -p osx && cd osx $ ../bootstrap --host=x86_64-apple-darwin10 --build=x86_64-apple-darwin10
Prebuilt libraries
If you want to download a prebuilt package of all the needed libraries.
$ make prebuilt
Build your own libraries
If you want to build from source a package in the contribs:
$ make -j4 .gettext && make -j4
If you had no errors, the 3rd party libraries (contrib) are built correctly and you can proceed to the next step.
Go Back
Go back to the VLC source directory:
$ cd ../..
Bootstrap VLC
This will create the configure script:
$ ./bootstrap
Configure the VLC build
Create a build folder:
$ mkdir -p build && cd build
To list the different options of configure:
$ ../extras/package/macosx/configure.sh --help
To build a 64 bits binary:
$ ../extras/package/macosx/configure.sh --enable-debug --host=x86_64-apple-darwin10 --build=x86_64-apple-darwin10
Build VLC
$ make -j4
and wait...
Package VLC Application for Mac
If you want to share the application with another user or another computer:
$ make VLC-release.app
If you want a disk-image:
$ make package-macosx
Respectively make package-macosx-plugin for the Safari/Mozilla plugin.
What's wrong: troubleshooting
Xcode path
Starting with Leopard, Xcode may be installed to a custom location on the administrator's choice. While this is non-problematic for ordinary Xcode projects, VLC needs a little help. You have to place extra symbolic links in /Developer pointing to your custom location for these folders:
usr, Headers, Private, SDKs, Tools, Makefiles
You can easily create these links by executing the following command for each folder (whereas theFolder is one of these six):
ln -s /full/path/to/Developer/theFolder /Developer/theFolder
Xcode version
Please make sure that you are using the latest Xcode3 or the latest version of Xcode4 to compile VLC
3rd party packagers and PATH
Pay careful attention to remove any reference to 3rd party package managersfrom your environment. This is important to avoid conflicts between your package manager (homebrew, fink, macports...) and the contrib package manager we use to build our contrib.
It shouldn't be necessary, but it can happen.
git must still be accessible though!
$ unset PKG_CONFIG_PATH $ unset PKG_CONFIG_LIBDIR $ export PATH=$PWD/build/bin:/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin
