Introduction
------------

This document describes how to build xine library under Windows.


Download
--------
Checkout source code from CVS (under Windows can be used CygWin or another tool). You will need 'xine-lib' (the library) and 'xine-win32' (testing Windows frontend).


Build
-----

There are three different ports on Windows:
 1) MinGW (the simplest and recommended)
 1) CygWin
 3) M$ Visual C, or maybe .NET (recommended for debugging)


1. MinGW port
-------------
This is the best way. Final library is 100% native Windows with all optimizations.

Also you can use cross-build from comfortable unix-like system. See README.MINGWCROSS for more information.

Requirements for compilation under Windows:
  a) MinGW installed on Windows
  b) LIB.EXE, LINK.EXE and MSPDB60.DLL from M$ Visual C 
     (necessary only for usability created xine library by M$ compilers)

How to build:
    #
    # configure for building in MinGW under Windows
    #
    ./configure --with-dxheaders=DIRECTORY

    #
    # compile
    #
    make

    #
    # install and manually remove the static plugins
    #
    make install DESTDIR=/tmp/xine-lib
    rm /tmp/xine-lib/bin/plugins/*.a
    rm /tmp/xine-lib/bin/plugins/post/*.a

Prepare xine library for using in M$ compilers too:
    # run terminal window (MinGW for example)
    ...
    # creating libxine-1.lib file
    cd <path_where_libxine_is_installed_>/lib
    cp ../bin/libxine-1.dll .
    <path_to_M$VC>/VC98/BIN/LIB.EXE /machine:i386 /def:libxine-1.def
    rm libxine-1.dll


2. CygWin port
--------------
This is the second way. Created library won't be 100% windows native: it will contains some additional emulation code and I'm not sure, if can be used with M$ compilers.

It's possible to use CygWin for cross-compiling with MinGW.

How to build:
    #
    # configure
    #
    ./configure --with-dxheaders=DIRECTORY

    #
    # compile
    #
    make

    #
    # install
    #
    make install DESTDIR=/tmp/xine-lib


3. M$ Visual C port
-------------------
This build system is different from the one, used for all other platforms, but we partially keep it up to date - just for experimental reasons, but only if we have access to some M$ computer.

Reasons, why not to use this port:
 - can't compile included ffmpeg (important multi-decoder in xine)
 - can't compile new assembler code (it means degradation of power)
 - never 100% up to date
 - somebody must buy the OS and compiler

Reasons, why to use this port:
 - obtaining backtrace after crash, debugging

How to build xine in M$ Visual C:
  - Set up MSVC to look for DirectX headers.

  - Open up the xine.dsw workspace/project in MSVC.

  - Unless you have a project file to build css you must select Cancel when prompted for the libdvdcss.dsp file.

  - Click on the FileView tab.

  - Build the following projects in this order:
    libxinesuppt
    libxine
    libdvdnav

  - Next build any desired plugins (decoders/demuxers ...). The ao_out_directx and vo_out_directx are required for Win32. There is an option to use the vo_out_sdl but a sdl.dll must be present for that to take place. There have also been some issues observed with the directX video driver on some machines.

  - If you want ffmpeg decoder plugin, you must use precompiled version. If you want to compile it, you should have the files LIB.EXE, LINK.EXE and MSPDB60.DLL from the Visual C++.
    Under MinGW you can compile ffmpeg for xine by this way:

    #
    # for cross-compiling add "--cross-prefix=i386-mingw32-" and "--disable-mmx"
    #
    ./configure \
       --enable-gpl \
       --enable-pp \
       --enable-shared \
       --disable-zlib \
       --enable-mingw32
    make
    make install prefix=/tmp/ffmpeg
    cp avcodec/avcodec.def /tmp/ffmpeg
    #
    # for cross-compiling finalize linking by running this command 
    #
    wine LIB.EXE /machine:i386 /def:avcodec.def

Status
------

There remains many of work yet on Windows port.

Limitations:
 - doesn't work under Win95/98 (DirectX? win32-pthreads?)
 - file > 1GB doesn't work (MinGW problem?)
 - missing full Win32 frontend
 - build system isn't fully tuned for cross-compiling

Bugs:
 - use GetCurrentDirectory(SIZE, STR) because of changing volume drive!
 - random crashes
 - seeking doesn't work with testing frontend
 - non-seekable input plugins crash