-$Id$
-
-INSTALL file for the Windows9x/Me/NT4/2k/XP version of the VLC media player
+INSTALL file for the Windows XP/Vista/Seven version of VLC media player
Running VLC
===========
-If you have already built VLC (see below) or are using a binary release,
-just run 'vlc.exe'.
+If you are using a binary release from videolan.org or if you have already built
+VLC (see below), just run 'vlc.exe'.
You can also run VLC from a dos command box, 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 -vv --extraintf=logger'. You will end-up with a vlc-log.txt file in
+'vlc -vvv --extraintf=logger'. You will end-up with a vlc-log.txt file in
your current directory.
-Additional documentation is available at http://www.videolan.org/doc/
+Additional documentation is available at http://www.videolan.org/doc/ and http://wiki.videolan.org/.
Building VLC from the source code
If you want to build VLC from sources, you can do it in several ways:
+- On GNU/Linux, using the mingw32 cross-compiler.
+ This method is preferred over all the others.
+
+- natively on Windows, using MSYS+MINGW (www.mingw.org)
+ (MSYS is a minimal build environment to compile Unixish projects under
+ windows. It provides all the common Unix tools like sh, gmake...)
+
+UNSUPPORTED METHODS
+-------------------
- natively on Windows, using cygwin (www.cygwin.com) with or without the
POSIX emulation layer. This is the preferred way to compile vlc if you want
to do it on Windows.
- NOTE: This is the PREFERRED way of building VLC natively (the others
- are not as much tested so expect more difficulties with them).
+ Read http://wiki.videolan.org/Win32CompileCygwinNew to have a complete HOWTO
+
+- natively on Windows, using Microsoft Visual Studio. This will not work.
-- natively on Windows, using MSYS+MINGW (www.mingw.org)
- (MSYS is a minimal build environment to compile Unixish projects under
- windoze. It provides all the common Unix tools like sh, gmake...)
- Please note that the gettext utilities are not included in the default
- MSYS/MINGW packages so you won't be able to build VLC with i18n support.
-
-- natively on Windows, using Microsoft Visual C++. Even though we provide some
- msvc project files with vlc, this method is advised only if you just want to
- experiment/play with some basic functionality in vlc. The reason for this
- is that vlc depends on a lot of 3rd party libraries and building them in
- MSVC is not convenient and sometimes even impossible.
- ( NOTE: if you want to run vlc under the msvc debugger, you need to run it
- with the --fast-mutex --win9x-cv-method=1 options because the debugger
- usually loses signals sent by PulseEvent() )
-
-- or on GNU/Linux, using the mingw32 cross-compiler.
- This method is preferred over all the others.
Getting the right compiler tools
================================
- cross-compiling with mingw32:
You first need to download a GNU/Linux cross-compiler version of mingw32.
-For Debian GNU/Linux users, you can use the mingw32, mingw32-binutils and
+For Debian GNU/Linux users, you can use the gcc-mingw32, mingw32-binutils and
mingw32-runtime packages.
+For Fedora users, you can use mingw-binutils, mingw-gcc-core, mingw-gcc-g++
-- compiling natively on Windoze with cygwin:
-You will need to download and run the setup.exe app from cygwin's web site
-(www.cygwin.com). You will also need to make sure you install at least the
-gcc-g++, gcc-mingw, mingw-runtime and win32-api packages.
-
-- compiling natively on Windoze with MSYS+MINGW:
-You will need to download and install the latest MSYS, MSYS-DTK and MINGW.
-The installation is really easy. Begin with the MSYS auto-installer and once
-this is done, 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).
+For MingW and Cygwin, please refer to our Wiki:
+- http://wiki.videolan.org/Win32CompileMSYS
+- http://wiki.videolan.org/Win32CompileCygwin
-http://www.mingw.org/download.shtml
-http://prdownloads.sf.net/mingw/MSYS-1.0.9.exe
-http://prdownloads.sf.net/mingw/MinGW-3.1.0-1.exe
-http://prdownloads.sf.net/mingw/msysDTK-1.0.1.exe
Getting the additional libraries
=================================
-VLC depends on other libraries to provide some features like ac3 audio decoding
-or mpeg4 video decoding, etc...
+VLC depends on many other libraries to provide some features like most of the codecs.
-Depending on your needs you will have to compile/install some or all of these
-external libraries.
-
-* They can be found here (source code):
- http://download.videolan.org/pub/testing/contrib/
+Usually, you don't want to compile those by yourself, so use pre-compiled ones.
* We also provide a package with all the libraries already compiled so it is
actually really easy to compile a full-featured version of vlc (these compiled
libraries will only work with mingw or cygwin):
- http://download.videolan.org/pub/testing/win32/contrib-20060330-win32-bin-gcc-3.4.5-only.tar.bz2
+ http://download.videolan.org/pub/testing/win32/contrib-200xxxxx-win32-bin-gcc-x.x.x-only.tar.bz2
(Check out for more recent versions at the same location).
All you need to do is extract it in your root directory (the include files
tar xjvf contrib-20060330-win32-bin-gcc-3.4.5-only.tar.bz2 -C /
- Please note the "-C /".
+ Please note the "-C /".
* 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.
-A complete list of the libraries on which we depend can be found here:
-http://developers.videolan.org/vlc/
Configuring the build
=====================
I'll assume that you are using the pre-compiled 3rd party libraries we are
providing and that they are in /usr/win32.
-If you are cross-compiling from Debian, you can use something
-along those lines:
-
- ./bootstrap && \
- PATH=/usr/win32/bin:$PATH \
- PKG_CONFIG_LIBDIR=/usr/win32/lib/pkgconfig \
- CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/win32/include -I/usr/win32/include/ebml" \
- LDFLAGS=-L/usr/win32/lib \
- CC=i586-mingw32msvc-gcc CXX=i586-mingw32msvc-g++ \
- ./configure --host=i586-mingw32msvc --build=i386-linux \
- --disable-gtk \
- --enable-nls --enable-sdl --with-sdl-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
- --enable-ffmpeg --with-ffmpeg-mp3lame --with-ffmpeg-faac \
- --with-ffmpeg-zlib --enable-faad --enable-flac --enable-theora \
- --with-wx-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
- --with-freetype-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
- --with-fribidi-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
- --enable-live555 --with-live555-tree=/usr/win32/live.com \
- --enable-caca --with-caca-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
- --with-xml2-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
- --with-dvdnav-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
- --disable-cddax --disable-vcdx --enable-goom \
- --enable-twolame --enable-dvdread \
- --enable-debug
-
-If you are using cygwin, you can build VLC with or without the POSIX
-emulation layer. Without is usually better and with POSIX emulation
-hasn't been tested in about a year or so. So to build without the
-emulation layer, use something like this:
-
- ./bootstrap && \
- PATH=/usr/win32/bin:$PATH \
- PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/win32/lib/pkgconfig \
- CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/win32/include -I/usr/win32/include/ebml" \
- LDFLAGS=-L/usr/win32/lib \
- CC="gcc -mno-cygwin" CXX="g++ -mno-cygwin" \
- ./configure \
- --disable-gtk \
- --enable-nls --enable-sdl --with-sdl-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
- --enable-ffmpeg --with-ffmpeg-mp3lame --with-ffmpeg-faac \
- --with-ffmpeg-zlib --enable-faad --enable-flac --enable-theora \
- --with-wx-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
- --with-freetype-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
- --with-fribidi-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
- --enable-live555 --with-live555-tree=/usr/win32/live.com \
- --enable-caca --with-caca-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
- --with-xml2-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
- --with-dvdnav-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
- --disable-cddax --disable-vcdx --enable-goom \
- --enable-twolame --enable-dvdread \
- --enable-debug
-
-If you want to use the emulation layer, then just omit the CC="gcc -mno-cygwin"
-CXX="g++ -mno-cygwin" line. You're on your own though.
-
-If you are compiling with MSYS/MINGW, then you can use something along those
-lines:
- ./bootstrap && \
- PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/win32/lib/pkgconfig \
- PATH=/usr/win32/bin:$PATH \
- CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/win32/include -I/usr/win32/include/ebml" \
- LDFLAGS=-L/usr/win32/lib \
- ./configure \
- --disable-gtk \
- --enable-nls --enable-sdl --with-sdl-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
- --enable-ffmpeg --with-ffmpeg-mp3lame --with-ffmpeg-faac \
- --with-ffmpeg-zlib --enable-faad --enable-flac --enable-theora \
- --with-wx-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
- --with-freetype-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
- --with-fribidi-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
- --enable-caca --with-caca-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
- --with-xml2-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
- --with-dvdnav-config-path=/usr/win32/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 precise
-the 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
+If you are cross-compiling from Debian, you can use this:
+
+ sh extras/package/win32/configure-mingw.sh
+
+
+If you are compiling with MSYS/MINGW, then you can use this:
+ sh extras/package/win32/configure-msys.sh
+
+
+If you are using cygwin, you should build VLC without the POSIX emulation layer.
+Use this:
+
+ sh extras/package/win32/configure-cygwin.sh
See `./configure --help' for more information.
+
Actually Compiling the VLC source
=================================
tree or you can build self-contained VLC packages with the following
'make' rules:
- make package-win32-base
+ make package-win-base
will create a subdirectory named vlc-x.x.x with all the binaries
'stripped' (ie. without any debugging symbols).
projects / vlc / blobdiff