1 $Id: INSTALL.win32,v 1.19 2003/07/29 17:42:58 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 Additional documentation is available at http://www.videolan.org/doc/
23 Building VLC from the source code
24 =================================
26 If you want to build VLC from sources, you can do it in several ways:
28 - natively on Windows, using cygwin (www.cygwin.com) with or without the
29 unix emulation layer. This is the prefered way to compile vlc if you want
32 - natively on Windows, using MSYS+MINGW (www.mingw.org)
33 (MSYS is a minimal build environnement to compile unixish projects under
34 windoze. It provides all the common unix tools like sh, gmake...)
35 Please note that the gettext utilities are not included in the default
36 MSYS/MINGW packages so you won't be able to build VLC with i18n support.
38 - natively on Windows, using Microsoft Visual C++. Even though we provide some
39 msvc project files with vlc, this method is advised only if you just want to
40 experiment/play with some basic functionnalities in vlc. The reason for this
41 is that vlc depends on a lot of 3rd party libraries and building them in
42 MSVC is not convenient and sometimes even impossible.
43 ( NOTE: if you want to run vlc under the msvc debugger, you need to run it
44 with the --fast-mutex --win9x-cv-method=1 options because the debugger
45 usually loses signals sent by PulseEvent() )
47 - or on Linux, using the mingw32 cross-compiler.
49 Getting the right compiler tools
50 ================================
52 - cross-compiling with mingw32:
53 You first need to download a linux cross-compiler version of mingw32.
54 (for Debian GNU/Linux users, you can use the mingw32, mingw32-binutils and
55 mingw32-runtime packages)
57 - compiling natively on Windoze with cygwin:
58 You will need to download and run the setup.exe app from cygwin's web site
59 (www.cygwin.com). You will also need to make sure you install at least the
60 gcc-mingw, mingw-runtime and w32api packages.
62 - compiling natively on Windoze with MSYS+MINGW:
63 You will need to download and install the latest MSYS, MSYS-DTK and MINGW.
64 The installation is really easy. Begin with the MSYS auto-installer and once
65 this is done, extract MINGW into c:\msys\1.0\mingw. You also have to remember
66 to remove the make utility included with MINGW as it conflicts with the one
67 from MSYS (just rename or remove c:\msys\1.0\mingw\bin\make.exe).
69 http://www.mingw.org/download.shtml
70 http://prdownloads.sf.net/mingw/MSYS-1.0.9.exe
71 http://prdownloads.sf.net/mingw/MinGW-3.0.0-rc3.exe
72 http://prdownloads.sf.net/mingw/msysDTK-1.0.1.exe
74 Getting the additionnal libraries
75 =================================
77 VLC depends on other libraries to provide some features like ac3 audio decoding
78 or mpeg4 video decoding, etc...
80 Depending on your needs you will have to compile/install some or all of these
83 They can be found here (source code):
84 http://www.videolan.org/pub/testing/contrib/
86 We also provide a package with all the libraries already compiled so it is
87 actually really easy to compile a full-featured version of vlc (these compiled
88 libraries will only work with mingw or cygwin):
89 http://www.videolan.org/pub/testing/win32/contrib-20030729-win32-bin.tar.bz2
90 All you need to do is extract it in your root directory (the include files
91 and libraries will be put in /usr/win32). You can do this with the following
92 command: "tar xjvf contrib-20030729-win32-bin.tar.bz2 -C /"
94 A complete list of the libraries on which we depend can be found here:
95 http://developers.videolan.org/vlc/
100 Once you've got all the files you need in place, you need to configure the
101 build with the `./configure' script.
103 I'll assume that you are using the pre-compiled 3rd party libraries I'm
104 providing and that they are in /usr/win32.
106 If you are cross-compiling from Debian, you can use something
110 CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/win32/include -I/usr/win32/include/ebml" \
111 LDFLAGS=-L/usr/win32/lib \
112 CC=i586-mingw32msvc-gcc CXX=i586-mingw32msvc-g++ \
113 ./configure --host=i586-mingw32msvc --build=i386-linux \
114 --disable-sdl --disable-gtk \
116 --enable-ffmpeg --with-ffmpeg-mp3lame \
120 --with-wx-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
121 --with-freetype-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
124 If you are using cygwin, you can build VLC with or without the unix emulation
125 layer (without is usually better). To build without the emulaion layer, use
128 CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/win32/include -I/usr/win32/include/ebml" \
129 LDFLAGS=-L/usr/win32/lib \
130 CC="gcc -mno-cygwin" CXX="g++ -mno-cygwin" \
132 --disable-sdl --disable-gtk \
134 --enable-ffmpeg --with-ffmpeg-mp3lame \
138 --with-wx-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
139 --with-freetype-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
142 If you want to use the emulation layer, then just omit the CC="gcc -mno-cygwin"
143 CXX="g++ -mno-cygwin" line.
145 If you are compiling with MSYS/MINGW, then you can use something along those
148 CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/win32/include -I/usr/win32/include/ebml" \
149 LDFLAGS=-L/usr/win32/lib \
151 --disable-sdl --disable-gtk \
154 --enable-ffmpeg --with-ffmpeg-mp3lame \
158 --with-wx-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
159 --with-freetype-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
162 See `./configure --help' for more information.
164 Actually Compiling the VLC source
165 =================================
167 Once configured, to build VLC, just run `make'.
169 Well done, now you're ready to use VLC!
170 =======================================