Win32CompileMSYSNew

Introduction

MSYS is a helper environment for MinGW, the compiler chain for Windows based on GCC. It is the fastest way to build VLC natively on Windows.

This howto was re-created by Jean-Baptiste Kempf and updated in June 2009, September 2009, December 2009 and March 2010

Text editor

To edit unix-style text documents you need a suitable editor.

For those wishing to have a Notepad look-and-feel I recommend notepad2, which may tempt you to ditch Notepad alltogether. You can set File - Line endings - Default to "Unix (LF)", but it always saves opened files in the ending style they have.

Install MinGW

Use the main installer 5.1.6 found at http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/files/Automated%20MinGW%20Installer/MinGW%205.1.6/MinGW-5.1.6.exe/download

Go through the wizard:

• select "Downloading and Install"
• select candidate release
• select g++ and MinGW Make (in addition to the base system)

It will download (from http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/mingw) and install (based on mingw.ini file Build 12):

• mingwrt-3.17-mingw32-dev.tar.gz
• mingwrt-3.17-mingw32-dll.tar.gz
• w32api-3.14-mingw32-dev.tar.gz
• binutils-2.18.50-20080109-2.tar.gz
• gcc-core-3.4.5-20060117-3.tar.gz
• gcc-g++-3.4.5-20060117-3.tar.gz
• mingw32-make-3.81-2.tar.gz

Update Mingw GCC to 4.4.0

Use GCC 4.4.0, with http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/files/GCC%20Version%204/Current%20Release_%20gcc-4.4.0/gcc-full-4.4.0-mingw32-bin-2.tar.lzma/download

Extract it to C:\Mingw and make it replace the current files (you can use 7-zip to extract the files).

• Use text editor to change MinGW\lib\gcc\mingw32\4.4.0\libstdc++.la file (line should be library_names='') due to bug in latest MinGW.

It also needs http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/files/GCC%20Version%204/Current%20Release_%20gcc-4.4.0/gcc-core-4.4.0-mingw32-dll.tar.gz/download to be installed otherwise there are warnings about a libgcc_s_dw2-1.dll missing when it comes to compiling the qt4 interface.

ALTERNATIVE for above installation: Install TDM MinGW 4.4.1

The above setup may produce build errors like "undefined reference to `__Unwind_SjLj_Register'" when compiling vlc. That is because the above 4.4.0 build uses DW2(Dwarf-2) unwinding.

You need a MinGW build of SJLJ unwinding.

An easy installer is offered on Twilight Dragon Media: (Thanks to MichaelMc)

• http://sourceforge.net/projects/tdm-gcc/files/TDM-MinGW%20Installer/1.908.0/tdm-mingw-1.908.0-4.4.1-2.exe/download

• Use text editor to change MinGW\lib\gcc\mingw32\4.4.1\libstdc++.la file (line should be library_names='') due to bug in latest MinGW.

It also needs http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/files/GCC%20Version%204/Current%20Release_%20gcc-4.4.0/gcc-core-4.4.0-mingw32-dll.tar.gz/download to be installed otherwise there are warnings about a libgcc_s_dw2-1.dll missing when it comes to compiling the qt4 interface.

Install MSYS

• Install 7-zip and Mozilla Firefox
• Install MSys 1.0.11-rc1 with the exe: http://sourceforge.net/project/downloading.php?group_id=2435&filename=MSYS-1.0.11.exe to default C:\Msys\1.0 folder

Accept Post Install: [y]
MinGW Installed? :   [y]
path to MinGW:       [c:/MinGW]

• Install MSys Developer Tooltkit: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/mingw/msysDTK-1.0.1.exe

AutoTools in MSYS

Update your autoconf, automake and libtool by downloading and installing them, keeping in mind that you need to extract the content to C:\Msys\1.0

• http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/files/MSYS%20autoconf/autoconf-2.63-1/autoconf-2.63-1-msys-1.0.11-bin.tar.lzma/download
• http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/files/MSYS%20automake/automake-1.11-1/automake-1.11-1-msys-1.0.11-bin.tar.lzma/download
• http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/files/MSYS%20libtool/libtool-2.2.7a-1/libtool-2.2.7a-1-msys-1.0.11-bin.tar.lzma/download

You can also compile them according to:

• http://trac.enlightenment.org/e/wiki/EFLWindowsXP (was: http://wiki.enlightenment.org/index.php/EFL_Windows_XP)
• http://www.mingw.org/wiki/msys

Patch libtools

If you installed the TDM MinGW 4.4.1, you may also need to patch the downloaded libtools file in your msys after installing, because it is hardcoded for the 4.4.0 version of MinGW:

• Use text editor to open /bin/libtools and find "compiler_lib_search_dirs" (lines 10244 to 10255) and change ALL "mingw32/4.4.0" instances to "mingw32/4.4.1"

Install libgcrypt in MSys

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/mingw/libcrypt-1.1_1-2-msys-1.0.11-dll-0.tar.lzma

Install other tools in Mingw

Installing mingw-utils is recommended: http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/mingw/mingw-utils-0.3.tar.gz, extract it to mingw/bin.

Installation of wget too: http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/mingw/wget-1.9.1-mingwPORT.tar.bz2

Although this is a mingwPORT package it already has a precompiled wget on board. Extract the .tar.bz2 file. It contains wget.exe in the bin subfolder, extract it to mingw/bin.

PKG-CONFIG

pkg-config is a mess, this is not NEWS... And you cannot compile it from Windows because of a few bugs...

Get Glib from GNOME: http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/binaries/win32/glib/2.18/glib_2.18.2-1_win32.zip Unzip it to C:\Msys\1.0 .

Get PKG-CONFIG from GNOME: ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/binaries/win32/dependencies/pkg-config_0.23-3_win32.zip and ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/binaries/win32/dependencies/pkg-config-dev_0.23-3_win32.zip Unzip them to C:\Msys\1.0 .

Install LUA tools

vlc uses the LUA scripting language (See lua.org).

If you don't have a lua.exe and luac.exe:

• Download the lua tools from http://www.lua.org/ftp/lua-5.1.4.tar.gz

Untar it in your home folder. There are no binaries supplied, so you need to compile this:

$ cd ~/lua-5.1.4 
$ make mingw

This should produce lua.exe, luac.exe and lua51.dll in the src directory. Put these in your /bin

$ cd src 
$ cp *.exe /bin
$ cp *.dll /bin

--Belbear 12:58, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Install Git and checkout VLC

See Git_Windows.

You can also retrieve the source code from VideoLAN Project: VLC media player source code

Contribs

Take the precompiled contribs from:

http://people.videolan.org/~jb/Contribs/

Copy them in your ~

tar xvjf contrib-20090813-win32-bin-gcc-4.2.1-sjlj-runtime-3.15.2-only.tar.bz2 -C /
rm -v /usr/win32/bin/moc /usr/win32/bin/uic /usr/win32/bin/rcc

rm isn't needed with some contrib packages, because they don't contain those files.

Bootstrap VLC

cd vlc
cp -v /usr/win32/share/aclocal/* m4/
cp -v /usr/share/aclocal/* m4/
PATH=/usr/win32/bin:$PATH ./bootstrap

It should warn about gettext... Just ignore.

Configure

sh extras/package/win32/configure-msys.sh

• If you downloaded a VLC source code tarball, retrieve configure-msys.sh and configure-common.sh from [vlc.git] / extras / package / win32 /
• If Your user name starts from "u" or "x" characters, change config.h (double all backslashes in COMPILED_BY constant to avoid compilation errors) after configuring.

Compile

PATH=/usr/win32/bin:$PATH make

If you have Cygwin and others tools installed, try using a shorter PATH inside MSYS shell i.e.

$ echo $PATH
.:/usr/local/bin:/mingw/bin:/bin

Creating self-contained packages

Once the compilation is done, build self-contained VLC packages with the following "make" commands:

make package-win32-base

(This will create a subdirectory named vlc-x.x.x with all the binaries "stripped" without any debugging symbols).

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 will need to have NSIS installed in its default location for this to work).

• If you have permissions problems running make package-*, chmod 777 -R the vlc folder.
• If you have permissions problems running vlc.exe after packaging, rename or delete vlc.exe.manifest

Random bootstrap, configure, and make errors

There have been reports of random msys errors during bootstrap, configure, and make. They usually don't repeat themselves between runs. Rule out that your mingw-msys installation is at fault by building in windows safe mode. Even if this works, it may then be more practical to try a cross-compilation build.

Troubleshooting

• It doesn't link, and complains about missing gcc symbols: You missed this line in the instructions:

Use text editor to change MinGW\lib\gcc\mingw32\4.4.0\libstdc++.la file (line should be library_names=) due to bug in latest MinGW.

• Compilation stops early, after configure was complaining about mismatched quotes:

Check the VLC_COMPILE_HOST variable in your config.h - if it's Option f is not valid then hostname -f fails (on Windows, there is no such option as -f). In configure.ac change

AC_DEFINE_UNQUOTED(VLC_COMPILE_HOST, "`hostname -f 2> /dev/null || hostname`", [host which ran configure])

to

AC_DEFINE_UNQUOTED(VLC_COMPILE_HOST, "`hostname`", [host which ran configure])