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 POSIX emulation layer. This is the preferred way to compile vlc if you want
31 NOTE: This is the PREFERRED way of building VLC natively (the others
32 are not as much tested so expect more difficulties with them).
34 - natively on Windows, using MSYS+MINGW (www.mingw.org)
35 (MSYS is a minimal build environment to compile Unixish projects under
36 windoze. It provides all the common Unix tools like sh, gmake...)
37 Please note that the gettext utilities are not included in the default
38 MSYS/MINGW packages so you won't be able to build VLC with i18n support.
40 - natively on Windows, using Microsoft Visual C++. Even though we provide some
41 msvc project files with vlc, this method is advised only if you just want to
42 experiment/play with some basic functionality in vlc. The reason for this
43 is that vlc depends on a lot of 3rd party libraries and building them in
44 MSVC is not convenient and sometimes even impossible.
45 ( NOTE: if you want to run vlc under the msvc debugger, you need to run it
46 with the --fast-mutex --win9x-cv-method=1 options because the debugger
47 usually loses signals sent by PulseEvent() )
49 - or on GNU/Linux, using the mingw32 cross-compiler.
51 Getting the right compiler tools
52 ================================
54 - cross-compiling with mingw32:
55 You first need to download a GNU/Linux cross-compiler version of mingw32.
57 For Debian GNU/Linux users, you can use the mingw32, mingw32-binutils and
58 mingw32-runtime packages.
60 Or you can use our mingw32 gcc-3.3.1 cross-compiler package:
61 http://www.videolan.org/pub/testing/win32/mingw-gcc3.3.1-linux-crosscompiler.tar.bz2 (requires libc6 >= 2.3.2).
62 You will need to extract this package in your root directory (everything will
63 be extracted in /usr/local/cross-tools).
65 - compiling natively on Windoze with cygwin:
66 You will need to download and run the setup.exe app from cygwin's web site
67 (www.cygwin.com). You will also need to make sure you install at least the
68 gcc-g++, gcc-mingw, mingw-runtime and win32-api packages.
70 - compiling natively on Windoze with MSYS+MINGW:
71 You will need to download and install the latest MSYS, MSYS-DTK and MINGW.
72 The installation is really easy. Begin with the MSYS auto-installer and once
73 this is done, extract MINGW into c:\msys\1.0\mingw. You also have to remember
74 to remove the make utility included with MINGW as it conflicts with the one
75 from MSYS (just rename or remove c:\msys\1.0\mingw\bin\make.exe).
77 http://www.mingw.org/download.shtml
78 http://prdownloads.sf.net/mingw/MSYS-1.0.9.exe
79 http://prdownloads.sf.net/mingw/MinGW-3.1.0-1.exe
80 http://prdownloads.sf.net/mingw/msysDTK-1.0.1.exe
82 Getting the additional libraries
83 =================================
85 VLC depends on other libraries to provide some features like ac3 audio decoding
86 or mpeg4 video decoding, etc...
88 Depending on your needs you will have to compile/install some or all of these
91 They can be found here (source code):
92 http://download.videolan.org/pub/testing/contrib/
94 We also provide a package with all the libraries already compiled so it is
95 actually really easy to compile a full-featured version of vlc (these compiled
96 libraries will only work with mingw or cygwin):
97 http://download.videolan.org/pub/testing/win32/contrib-20051104-win32-bin-gcc3.3.1-only.tar.bz2
98 (This one was the current one when the release was done. More recent ones may work).
100 All you need to do is extract it in your root directory (the include files
101 and libraries will be put in /usr/win32). You can do this with the following
104 tar xjvf contrib-20051104-win32-bin-gcc3.3.1-only.tar.bz2 -C /
106 Please note the "-C /".
108 A complete list of the libraries on which we depend can be found here:
109 http://developers.videolan.org/vlc/
111 Configuring the build
112 =====================
114 Once you've got all the files you need in place, you need to configure the
115 build with the `./configure' script.
117 I'll assume that you are using the pre-compiled 3rd party libraries I'm
118 providing and that they are in /usr/win32.
120 If you are cross-compiling from Debian, you can use something
124 CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/win32/include -I/usr/win32/include/ebml" \
125 LDFLAGS=-L/usr/win32/lib \
126 CC=i586-mingw32msvc-gcc CXX=i586-mingw32msvc-g++ \
127 ./configure --host=i586-mingw32msvc --build=i386-linux \
129 --enable-nls --enable-sdl --with-sdl-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
130 --enable-ffmpeg --with-ffmpeg-mp3lame --with-ffmpeg-faac \
131 --with-ffmpeg-zlib --enable-faad --enable-flac --enable-theora \
132 --with-wx-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
133 --with-freetype-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
134 --with-fribidi-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
135 --enable-livedotcom --with-livedotcom-tree=/usr/win32/live.com \
136 --enable-caca --with-caca-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
137 --with-xml2-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
138 --with-dvdnav-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
139 --disable-cddax --disable-vcdx --enable-goom \
140 --enable-twolame --enable-dvdread \
143 If you are cross-compiling with our gcc-3.3.1 package, you can use something
147 PATH=/usr/local/mingw/bin:$PATH \
148 CPPFLAGS=-I/usr/win32/include \
149 LDFLAGS=-L/usr/win32/lib \
150 CC=i586-mingw32msvc-gcc CXX=i586-mingw32msvc-g++ \
151 ./configure --host=i586-mingw32msvc --build=i386-linux \
153 --enable-nls --enable-sdl --with-sdl-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
154 --enable-ffmpeg --with-ffmpeg-mp3lame --with-ffmpeg-faac \
155 --with-ffmpeg-zlib --enable-faad --enable-flac --enable-theora \
156 --with-wx-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
157 --with-freetype-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
158 --with-fribidi-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
159 --enable-livedotcom --with-livedotcom-tree=/usr/win32/live.com \
160 --enable-caca --with-caca-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
161 --with-xml2-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
162 --with-dvdnav-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
163 --disable-cddax --disable-vcdx --enable-goom \
164 --enable-twolame --enable-dvdread \
167 If you are using cygwin, you can build VLC with or without the POSIX
168 emulation layer. Without is usually better and with POSIX emulation
169 hasn't been tested in about a year or so. So to build without the
170 emulation layer, use something like this:
173 CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/win32/include -I/usr/win32/include/ebml" \
174 LDFLAGS=-L/usr/win32/lib \
175 CC="gcc -mno-cygwin" CXX="g++ -mno-cygwin" \
178 --enable-nls --enable-sdl --with-sdl-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
179 --enable-ffmpeg --with-ffmpeg-mp3lame --with-ffmpeg-faac \
180 --with-ffmpeg-zlib --enable-faad --enable-flac --enable-theora \
181 --with-wx-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
182 --with-freetype-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
183 --with-fribidi-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
184 --enable-livedotcom --with-livedotcom-tree=/usr/win32/live.com \
185 --enable-caca --with-caca-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
186 --with-xml2-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
187 --with-dvdnav-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
188 --disable-cddax --disable-vcdx --enable-goom \
189 --enable-twolame --enable-dvdread \
192 If you want to use the emulation layer, then just omit the CC="gcc -mno-cygwin"
193 CXX="g++ -mno-cygwin" line. You're on your own though.
195 If you are compiling with MSYS/MINGW, then you can use something along those
198 CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/win32/include -I/usr/win32/include/ebml" \
199 LDFLAGS=-L/usr/win32/lib \
202 --enable-nls --enable-sdl --with-sdl-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
203 --enable-ffmpeg --with-ffmpeg-mp3lame --with-ffmpeg-faac \
204 --with-ffmpeg-zlib --enable-faad --enable-flac --enable-theora \
205 --with-wx-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
206 --with-freetype-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
207 --with-fribidi-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
208 --enable-caca --with-caca-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
209 --with-xml2-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
210 --with-dvdnav-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
211 --disable-cddax --disable-vcdx --enable-goom \
212 --enable-twolame --enable-dvdread \
216 See `./configure --help' for more information.
218 Actually Compiling the VLC source
219 =================================
221 Once configured, to build VLC, just run `make'.
223 ( If you are using our gcc-3.3.1 cross-compiler you'll need to use:
224 PATH=/usr/local/mingw/bin:$PATH make )
226 Once the compilation is done, you can either run VLC directly from the source
227 tree or you can build self-contained VLC packages with the following
230 make package-win32-base
231 will create a subdirectory named vlc-x.x.x with all the binaries
232 'stripped' (ie. without any debugging symbols).
234 make package-win32-zip
235 Same as above but will package the directory in a zip file.
238 Same as above but will also create an auto-installer package. You will need
239 to have NSIS installed in its default location for this to work.
241 Well done, now you're ready to use VLC!
242 =======================================