Compiling for Windows ===================== Compiling for Windows is supported with MinGW-w64. This can be used to produce both 32-bit and 64-bit executables, and it works for building on Windows and cross-compiling from Linux and Cygwin. MinGW-w64 is available from: https://www.mingw-w64.org/ While building a complete MinGW-w64 toolchain yourself is possible, there are a few build environments and scripts to help ease the process, such as MSYS2 and MXE. Note that MinGW environments included in Linux distributions are often broken, outdated and useless, and usually don't use MinGW-w64. **Warning**: the original MinGW (https://osdn.net/projects/mingw/) is unsupported. Cross-compilation ================= When cross-compiling, it is recommended to use a meson crossfile to setup the cross compiling environment. A minimal example is included below: ```ini [binaries] c = 'x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc' cpp = 'x86_64-w64-mingw32-g++' ar = 'x86_64-w64-mingw32-ar' strip = 'x86_64-w64-mingw32-strip' exe_wrapper = 'wine64' [host_machine] system = 'windows' cpu_family = 'x86_64' cpu = 'x86_64' endian = 'little' ``` See [meson's documentation](https://mesonbuild.com/Cross-compilation.html) for more information. [MXE](https://mxe.cc) makes it very easy to bootstrap a complete MingGW-w64 environment from a Linux machine. See a working example below. Alternatively, you can try [mpv-winbuild-cmake](https://github.com/shinchiro/mpv-winbuild-cmake), which bootstraps a MinGW-w64 environment and builds mpv and dependencies. Example with MXE ---------------- ```bash # Before starting, make sure you install MXE prerequisites. MXE will download # and build all target dependencies, but no host dependencies. For example, # you need a working compiler, or MXE can't build the crosscompiler. # # Refer to # # https://mxe.cc/#requirements # # Scroll down for disto/OS-specific instructions to install them. # Download MXE. Note that compiling the required packages requires about 1.4 GB # or more! cd /opt git clone https://github.com/mxe/mxe mxe cd mxe # Set build options. # The JOBS environment variable controls threads to use when building. DO NOT # use the regular `make -j4` option with MXE as it will slow down the build. # Alternatively, you can set this in the make command by appending "JOBS=4" # to the end of command: echo "JOBS := 4" >> settings.mk # The MXE_TARGET environment variable builds MinGW-w64 for 32 bit targets. # Alternatively, you can specify this in the make command by appending # "MXE_TARGETS=i686-w64-mingw32" to the end of command: echo "MXE_TARGETS := i686-w64-mingw32.static" >> settings.mk # If you want to build 64 bit version, use this: # echo "MXE_TARGETS := x86_64-w64-mingw32.static" >> settings.mk # Build required packages. The following provide a minimum required to build # a reasonable mpv binary (though not an absolute minimum). make gcc ffmpeg libass jpeg lua luajit # Add MXE binaries to $PATH export PATH=/opt/mxe/usr/bin/:$PATH # Build mpv. The target will be used to automatically select the name of the # build tools involved (e.g. it will use i686-w64-mingw32.static-gcc). cd .. git clone https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv.git cd mpv meson setup build --crossfile crossfile meson compile -C build ``` Native compilation with MSYS2 ============================= For Windows developers looking to get started quickly, MSYS2 can be used to compile mpv natively on a Windows machine. The MSYS2 repositories have binary packages for most of mpv's dependencies, so the process should only involve building mpv itself. To build 64-bit mpv on Windows: Installing MSYS2 ---------------- 1. Download an installer from https://www.msys2.org/ Both the i686 and the x86_64 version of MSYS2 can build 32-bit and 64-bit mpv binaries when running on a 64-bit version of Windows, but the x86_64 version is preferred since the larger address space makes it less prone to fork() errors. 2. Start a MinGW-w64 shell (``mingw64.exe``). **Note:** This is different from the MSYS2 shell that is started from the final installation dialog. You must close that shell and open a new one. For a 32-bit build, use ``mingw32.exe``. Updating MSYS2 -------------- To prevent errors during post-install, the MSYS2 core runtime must be updated separately. ```bash # Check for core updates. If instructed, close the shell window and reopen it # before continuing. pacman -Syu # Update everything else pacman -Su ``` Installing mpv dependencies --------------------------- ```bash # Install MSYS2 build dependencies and a MinGW-w64 compiler pacman -S git $MINGW_PACKAGE_PREFIX-{python,pkgconf,gcc,meson} # Install the most important MinGW-w64 dependencies. libass and lcms2 are also # pulled in as dependencies of ffmpeg. pacman -S $MINGW_PACKAGE_PREFIX-{ffmpeg,libjpeg-turbo,luajit} ``` Building mpv ------------ Finally, compile and install mpv. Binaries will be installed to ``/mingw64/bin`` or ``/mingw32/bin``. ```bash meson setup build --prefix=$MSYSTEM_PREFIX meson compile -C build ``` Or, compile and install both libmpv and mpv: ```bash meson setup build -Dlibmpv=true --prefix=$MSYSTEM_PREFIX meson compile -C build meson install -C build ``` Linking libmpv with MSVC programs --------------------------------- mpv/libmpv cannot be built with Visual Studio (Microsoft is too incompetent to support C99/C11 properly and/or hates open source and Linux too much to seriously do it). But you can build C++ programs in Visual Studio and link them with a libmpv built with MinGW. To do this, you need a Visual Studio which supports ``stdint.h`` (recent ones do), and you need to create a import library for the mpv DLL: ```bash lib /name:mpv-1.dll /out:mpv.lib /MACHINE:X64 ``` The string in the ``/name:`` parameter must match the filename of the DLL (this is simply the filename the MSVC linker will use). Static linking is not possible. Running mpv ----------- If you want to run mpv from the MinGW-w64 shell, you will find the experience much more pleasant if you use the ``winpty`` utility ```bash pacman -S winpty winpty mpv.com ToS-4k-1920.mov ``` If you want to move / copy ``mpv.exe`` and ``mpv.com`` to somewhere other than ``/mingw64/bin/`` for use outside the MinGW-w64 shell, they will still depend on DLLs in that folder. The simplest solution is to add ``C:\msys64\mingw64\bin`` to the windows system ``%PATH%``. Beware though that this can cause problems or confusion in Cygwin if that is also installed on the machine. Use of the ANGLE OpenGL backend requires a copy of the D3D compiler DLL that matches the version of the D3D SDK that ANGLE was built with (``d3dcompiler_43.dll`` in case of MinGW-built ANGLE) in the path or in the same folder as mpv. It must be of the same architecture (x86_64 / i686) as the mpv you compiled.