1 $Id: INSTALL.win32,v 1.22 2004/01/24 21:06:51 hartman 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.
55 For Debian GNU/Linux users, you can use the mingw32, mingw32-binutils and
56 mingw32-runtime packages.
58 Or you can use our mingw32 gcc-3.3.1 cross-compiler package:
59 http://www.videolan.org/pub/testing/win32/mingw-gcc3.3.1-linux-crosscompiler.tar.bz2 (requires libc6 >= 2.3.2).
60 You will need to extract this package in your root directory (everything will
61 be extracted in /usr/local/cross-tools).
63 - compiling natively on Windoze with cygwin:
64 You will need to download and run the setup.exe app from cygwin's web site
65 (www.cygwin.com). You will also need to make sure you install at least the
66 gcc-g++, gcc-mingw, mingw-runtime and win32-api packages.
68 - compiling natively on Windoze with MSYS+MINGW:
69 You will need to download and install the latest MSYS, MSYS-DTK and MINGW.
70 The installation is really easy. Begin with the MSYS auto-installer and once
71 this is done, extract MINGW into c:\msys\1.0\mingw. You also have to remember
72 to remove the make utility included with MINGW as it conflicts with the one
73 from MSYS (just rename or remove c:\msys\1.0\mingw\bin\make.exe).
75 http://www.mingw.org/download.shtml
76 http://prdownloads.sf.net/mingw/MSYS-1.0.9.exe
77 http://prdownloads.sf.net/mingw/MinGW-3.0.0-rc3.exe
78 http://prdownloads.sf.net/mingw/msysDTK-1.0.1.exe
80 Getting the additionnal libraries
81 =================================
83 VLC depends on other libraries to provide some features like ac3 audio decoding
84 or mpeg4 video decoding, etc...
86 Depending on your needs you will have to compile/install some or all of these
89 They can be found here (source code):
90 http://download.videolan.org/pub/testing/contrib/
92 We also provide a package with all the libraries already compiled so it is
93 actually really easy to compile a full-featured version of vlc (these compiled
94 libraries will only work with mingw or cygwin):
95 http://download.videolan.org/pub/testing/win32/contrib-20040106-win32-bin-gcc3.3.1-only.tar.bz2
96 All you need to do is extract it in your root directory (the include files
97 and libraries will be put in /usr/win32). You can do this with the following
98 command: "tar xjvf contrib-20040106-win32-bin-gcc3.3.1-only.tar.bz2 -C /"
100 A complete list of the libraries on which we depend can be found here:
101 http://developers.videolan.org/vlc/
103 Configuring the build
104 =====================
106 Once you've got all the files you need in place, you need to configure the
107 build with the `./configure' script.
109 I'll assume that you are using the pre-compiled 3rd party libraries I'm
110 providing and that they are in /usr/win32.
112 If you are cross-compiling from Debian, you can use something
116 CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/win32/include -I/usr/win32/include/ebml" \
117 LDFLAGS=-L/usr/win32/lib \
118 CC=i586-mingw32msvc-gcc CXX=i586-mingw32msvc-g++ \
119 ./configure --host=i586-mingw32msvc --build=i386-linux \
120 --disable-sdl --disable-gtk \
122 --enable-ffmpeg --with-ffmpeg-mp3lame \
126 --with-wx-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
127 --with-freetype-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
128 --disable-fribidi --disable-vcdx \
131 If you are cross-compiling with our gcc-3.3.1 package, you can use something
135 PATH=/usr/local/mingw/bin:$PATH \
136 CPPFLAGS=-I/usr/win32/include \
137 LDFLAGS=-L/usr/win32/lib \
138 CC=i586-mingw32msvc-gcc CXX=i586-mingw32msvc-g++ \
139 ./configure --host=i586-mingw32msvc --build=i386-linux \
140 --disable-sdl --disable-gtk \
142 --enable-ffmpeg --with-ffmpeg-mp3lame \
146 --with-wx-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
147 --with-freetype-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
148 --with-fribidi-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
149 --disable-vcdx --enable-debug
151 If you are using cygwin, you can build VLC with or without the unix emulation
152 layer (without is usually better). To build without the emulaion layer, use
155 CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/win32/include -I/usr/win32/include/ebml" \
156 LDFLAGS=-L/usr/win32/lib \
157 CC="gcc -mno-cygwin" CXX="g++ -mno-cygwin" \
159 --disable-sdl --disable-gtk \
161 --enable-ffmpeg --with-ffmpeg-mp3lame \
165 --with-wx-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
166 --with-freetype-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
167 --with-fribidi-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
170 If you want to use the emulation layer, then just omit the CC="gcc -mno-cygwin"
171 CXX="g++ -mno-cygwin" line.
173 If you are compiling with MSYS/MINGW, then you can use something along those
176 CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/win32/include -I/usr/win32/include/ebml" \
177 LDFLAGS=-L/usr/win32/lib \
179 --disable-sdl --disable-gtk \
182 --enable-ffmpeg --with-ffmpeg-mp3lame \
186 --with-wx-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
187 --with-freetype-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
188 --with-fribidi-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
191 See `./configure --help' for more information.
193 Actually Compiling the VLC source
194 =================================
196 Once configured, to build VLC, just run `make'.
198 ( If you are using our gcc-3.3.1 cross-compiler you'll need to use:
199 PATH=/usr/local/mingw/bin:$PATH make )
201 Well done, now you're ready to use VLC!
202 =======================================