-$Id$
-
-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:
-- 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).
+- 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
- 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.
+ 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.
+ Read http://wiki.videolan.org/Win32CompileCygwinNew to have a complete HOWTO
-- 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() )
+- natively on Windows, using Microsoft Visual Studio. This will not work.
-- or on GNU/Linux, using the mingw32 cross-compiler.
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++
-Or you can use our mingw32 gcc-3.3.1 cross-compiler package:
-http://www.videolan.org/pub/testing/win32/mingw-gcc3.3.1-linux-crosscompiler.tar.bz2 (requires libc6 >= 2.3.2).
-You will need to extract this package in your root directory (everything will
-be extracted in /usr/local/cross-tools).
-
-- 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-20040902-win32-bin-gcc3.3.1-only.tar.bz2 (Check out fo more recent versions at the same location).
+ 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
and libraries will be put in /usr/win32). You can do this with the following
command:
- tar xjvf contrib-20040902-win32-bin-gcc3.3.1-only.tar.bz2 -C /
+ 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
=====================
Once you've got all the files you need in place, you need to configure the
build with the `./configure' script.
-I'll assume that you are using the pre-compiled 3rd party libraries I'm
+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 && \
- 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-livedotcom --with-livedotcom-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 cross-compiling with our gcc-3.3.1 package, you can use something
-along those lines:
-
- ./bootstrap && \
- PATH=/usr/local/mingw/bin:$PATH \
- CPPFLAGS=-I/usr/win32/include \
- 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-livedotcom --with-livedotcom-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 && \
- 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-livedotcom --with-livedotcom-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 && \
- 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-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
=================================
Once configured, to build VLC, just run `make'.
-( If you are using our gcc-3.3.1 cross-compiler you'll need to use:
- PATH=/usr/local/mingw/bin:$PATH make )
-
Once the compilation is done, you can either run VLC directly from the 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