1 $Id: INSTALL.win32,v 1.15 2003/05/22 12:00:56 gbazin Exp $
3 INSTALL file for the Windows9x/Me/NT4/2k/XP version of the VLC media player
9 If you have already built VLC (see below) or are using a binary release,
12 You can also run VLC from a dos command box, in which case you'll be able
13 to use the command line arguments. You can obtain a list of these command
14 line arguments by typing 'vlc --help' or 'vlc --help --advanced'.
16 To store a debug log of the current VLC session, you can use
17 'vlc -vv --extraintf=logger'. You will end-up with a vlc-log.txt file in
18 your current directory.
20 If you want to play a DVD, run VLC and click on the Disc option in the
21 interface. You then have to type your drive letter followed by a colon in
22 the 'Device name' box (eg. 'D:' if this is the letter for your dvdrom drive).
24 Additional documentation is available at http://www.videolan.org/doc/
27 Building VLC from the source code
28 =================================
30 If you want to build VLC from sources, you can do it in several ways:
32 - natively on Windows, using cygwin (www.cygwin.com) with or without the
33 unix emulation layer. This is the prefered way to compile vlc if you want
36 - natively on Windows, using MSYS+MINGW (www.mingw.org)
37 (MSYS is a minimal build environnement to compile unixish projects under
38 windoze. It provides all the common unix tools like sh, gmake...)
39 Please note that there is currenlty a bug in MSYS which requires you to
40 edit the acgeneral.m4 file and replace the value of ac_max_sed_lines to
41 something higher, for instance 976.
43 - natively on Windows, using Microsoft Visual C++. Even though we provide some
44 msvc project files with vlc, this method is advised only if you just want to
45 experiment/play with some basic functionnalities in vlc. The reason for this
46 is that vlc depends on a lot of 3rd party libraries and building them in
47 MSVC is not convenient and sometimes even impossible.
48 ( NOTE: if you want to run vlc under the msvc debugger, you need to run it
49 with the --fast-mutex --win9x-cv-method=1 options because the debugger
50 usually loses signals sent by PulseEvent() )
52 - or on Linux, using the mingw32 cross-compiler.
54 Getting the right compiler tools
55 ================================
57 - cross-compiling with mingw32:
58 You first need to download a linux cross-compiler version of mingw32.
59 (for Debian GNU/Linux users, you can use the mingw32, mingw32-binutils and
60 mingw32-runtime packages)
62 - compiling natively on Windoze with cygwin:
63 You will need to download and run the setup.exe app from cygwin's web site
64 (www.cygwin.com). You will also need to make sure you install at least the
65 gcc-mingw, mingw-runtime and w32api packages.
67 - compiling natively on Windoze with MSYS+MINGW:
68 You will need to download and install the latest MSYS, MSYS-DTK and MINGW.
69 The installation is really easy. Begin with the MSYS auto-installer and once
70 this is done, extract MINGW into c:\msys\1.0\mingw. You also have to remember
71 to remove the make utility included with MINGW as it conflicts with the one
72 from MSYS (just rename or remove c:\msys\1.0\mingw\bin\make.exe).
74 http://www.mingw.org/download.shtml
75 http://prdownloads.sf.net/mingw/MSYS-1.0.9-2003.14.18-1.exe
76 http://prdownloads.sf.net/mingw/MinGW-2.0.0-3.exe
77 http://prdownloads.sf.net/mingw/msysDTK-1.0.1.exe
79 Getting the additionnal libraries
80 =================================
82 VLC depends on other libraries to provide some features like ac3 audio decoding
83 or mpeg4 video decoding, etc...
85 Depending on your needs you will have to compile/install some or all of these
88 They can be found here (source code):
89 http://www.videolan.org/pub/testing/contrib/
91 I also provide a package with all the libraries already compiled so it is
92 actually really easy to compile a full-featured version of vlc (these compiled
93 libraries will only work with mingw or cygwin):
94 http://www.videolan.org/pub/testing/win32/contrib-20030420-win32-bin.tar.bz2
95 All you need to do is extract it in your root directory (the include files
96 and libraries will be put in /usr/win32)
98 A complete list of the libraries on which we depend can be found here:
99 http://developers.videolan.org/vlc/
101 Configuring the build
102 =====================
104 Once you've got all the files you need in place, you need to configure the
105 build with the `./configure' script.
107 I'll assume that you are using the pre-compiled 3rd party libraries I'm
108 providing and that they are in /usr/win32.
110 If you are cross-compiling from Debian, you can use something
114 CPPFLAGS=-I/usr/win32/include LDFLAGS=-L/usr/win32/lib \
115 CC=i586-mingw32msvc-gcc CXX=i586-mingw32msvc-g++ \
116 ./configure --host=i586-mingw32msvc --build=i386-linux \
117 --disable-sdl --disable-gtk \
118 --with-included-gettext --enable-nls \
121 --enable-dvdread --enable-dvdplay \
125 --with-wx-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
126 --with-skins-wx-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
127 --with-freetype-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
130 If you are using cygwin, you can build VLC with or without the unix emulation
131 layer (without is usually better). To build without the emulaion layer, use
134 CPPFLAGS=-I/usr/win32/include LDFLAGS=-L/usr/win32/lib \
135 CC="gcc -mno-cygwin" CXX="g++ -mno-cygwin" \
137 --disable-sdl --disable-gtk \
138 --with-included-gettext --enable-nls \
141 --enable-dvdread --enable-dvdplay \
145 --with-wx-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
146 --with-skins-wx-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
147 --with-freetype-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
150 If you want to use the emulation layer, then just omit the CC="gcc -mno-cygwin"
151 CXX="g++ -mno-cygwin" line.
153 If you are compiling with MSYS/MINGW, then you can use something along those
156 CPPFLAGS=-I/usr/win32/include LDFLAGS=-L/usr/win32/lib \
158 --disable-sdl --disable-gtk \
159 --with-included-gettext --enable-nls \
162 --enable-dvdread --enable-dvdplay \
166 --with-wx-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
167 --with-skins-wx-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
168 --with-freetype-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
171 See `./configure --help' for more information.
173 Actually Compiling the VLC source
174 =================================
176 Once configured, to build VLC, just run `make'.
178 Well done, now you're ready to use VLC!
179 =======================================