CMake-based MinGW-w64 Cross Toolchain

This thing’s primary use is to build Windows binaries of mpv.

This repo adds the capability to select the mpv version you want to compile.

Possible values are:

  • mpv (upstream mpv + upstream ffmpeg) => You can download the builds from here.
  • mpv-plex-otruehd => mpv with patches needed for Plex HTPC and HDR passthrough + the old FFmpeg trueHD passthrough logic.
  • mpv-plex-ntruehd => mpv with patches needed for Plex HTPC and HDR passthrough + the new and patched FFmpeg trueHD passthrough logic.
  • mpv-otruehd => upstream mpv + the old FFmpeg trueHD passthrough logic.
  • mpv-ntruehd => upstream mpv + the new and patched FFmpeg trueHD passthrough logic.

Prerequisites

  • You should also install Ninja and use CMake’s Ninja build file generator. It’s not only much faster than GNU Make, but also far less error-prone, which is important for this project because CMake’s ExternalProject module tends to generate makefiles that confuse GNU Make’s jobserver thingy.

  • As a build environment, any modern Linux distribution should work.

  • Compiling on Cygwin / MSYS2 is supported, but it tends to be slower than compiling on Linux.

Setup Build Environment

Manjaro / Arch Linux

First update your system:

pacman -Syu

These packages need to be installed first before compiling mpv:

pacman -S git gyp mercurial subversion ninja cmake ragel yasm nasm asciidoc enca gperf unzip p7zip gcc-multilib clang lld libc++ libc++abi python-pip curl lib32-gcc-libs lib32-glib2 mimalloc ccache

pacman -S llvm # needed for building LLVM PGO

Installing rst2pdf mako jsonschema through pip3 may work but could also error out...

pip3 install rst2pdf mako jsonschema

Installing them through pacman is recommend:

pacman -S python-mako python-jsonschema rst2pdf	

Another package we need is meson, for it to install run (recommended):

pacman -S meson

In the past I had it once that the version shipped with the distribution was out of date, so if building fails due to meson beeing out of date, run:

pip3 install https://github.com/mesonbuild/meson/archive/refs/heads/master.zip --break-system-packages

But only in this case... - Installing meson through pacman should be fine in most cases.

I highly recommend using Arch Linux as it contains all packages needed and also updates them very frequently. Alternatively, you can use any other distro containing up to date packages. If you are not that familiar with Arch or Linux in general, use Manjaro instead. Ubuntu tends to only feature older versions of the packages we need, they are likely the reason why the building process fails.

Other building environments like MSYS2 or Cygwin are supported and may work, but I never had luck using those, so I don´t recommend them.

Ubuntu Linux / WSL (Windows 10)

apt-get install build-essential checkinstall bison flex gettext git mercurial subversion ninja-build gyp cmake yasm nasm automake pkgconf libtool libtool-bin gcc-multilib g++-multilib clang lld libc++1 libc++abi1 libgmp-dev libmpfr-dev libmpc-dev libgcrypt-dev gperf ragel texinfo autopoint re2c asciidoc python3-pip docbook2x unzip p7zip-full curl mimalloc ccache

pip3 install rst2pdf meson mako jsonschema

Note:

  • Use apt-fast if apt-get is too slow.
  • It is advised to use bash over dash. Set sudo ln -sf /bin/bash /bin/sh. Revert back by sudo ln -sf /bin/dash /bin/sh.
  • On WSL platform, compiling 32bit requires qemu. Refer to this.
  • To update package installed by pip, run pip3 install <package> --upgrade.

Cygwin

Download Cygwin installer and run:

setup-x86_64.exe -R "C:\cygwin64" -q --packages="bash,binutils,bzip2,cygwin,gcc-core,gcc-g++,cygwin32-gcc-core,cygwin32-gcc-g++,gzip,m4,pkgconf,make,unzip,zip,diffutils,wget,git,patch,cmake,gperf,yasm,enca,asciidoc,bison,flex,gettext-devel,mercurial,python-devel,python-docutils,docbook2X,texinfo,libmpfr-devel,libgmp-devel,libmpc-devel,libtool,autoconf2.5,automake,automake1.9,libxml2-devel,libxslt-devel,meson,libunistring5"

Additionally, some packages, re2c, ninja, ragel, gyp, rst2pdf, nasm need to be installed manually.

MSYS2

Install MSYS2 and run it via MSYS2 MSYS shortcut. Don't use MSYS2 MinGW 32-bit or MSYS2 MinGW 64-bit shortcuts, that's important!

These packages need to be installed first before compiling mpv:

pacman -S base-devel cmake gcc yasm nasm git mercurial subversion gyp tar gmp-devel mpc-devel mpfr-devel python zlib-devel unzip zip p7zip meson libunistring5

Don't install anything from the mingw32 and mingw64 repositories, it's better to completely disable them in /etc/pacman.conf just to be safe.

Additionally, some packages, re2c, ninja, ragel, libjpeg, rst2pdf, jinja2 need to be installed manually.

Building Software (First Time with GCC)

To set up the build environment, first start cloning the repo to your local machine:

git clone https://github.com/mitzsch/mpv-winbuild-cmake.git -b mpv-different-versions
cd mpv-winbuild-cmake

Once you’ve changed into that directory, run CMake, e.g.

cmake -DTARGET_ARCH=x86_64-w64-mingw32 -G Ninja -B build64

Add -DGCC_ARCH=x86-64-v3 to command-line if you want to compile gcc with new x86-64-v3 instructions, like so

cmake -DTARGET_ARCH=x86_64-w64-mingw32 -DGCC_ARCH=x86-64-v3 -G Ninja -B build64

Other values like native, znver3 should work too in theory.

Optional step before starting... This will download all packages at once.

ninja download

First, you need to build the toolchain. By default, it will be installed in install folder. This takes some time (~20 minutes), even on fast machines.

ninja gcc

After it has finished, you're ready to build upstrean/unmodified mpv with upstream/unmodified ffmpeg and all its dependencies:

ninja mpv

In case you want to compile upstream/unmodified mpv with the modified ffmpeg code that contains the old truehd passthrough logic:

ninja mpv-otruehd

If you want to compile upstream/unmodified mpv with the modified ffmpeg code that contains the new and patched truehd passthrough logic:

ninja mpv-ntruehd

If you are a Plex HTPC user and wan't to build a modified mpv with the old trueHD passthrough logic:

ninja mpv-plex-otruehd

... or modified mpv with the new and patched trueHD passthrough logic:

ninja mpv-plex-ntruehd

This will take a while, be patient.

The final build64 folder's size will be around ~15GB.

Building Software (First Time with Clang)

To set up the build environment, first start cloning the repo to your local machine:

git clone https://github.com/mitzsch/mpv-winbuild-cmake.git -b mpv-different-versions
cd mpv-winbuild-cmake

Once you’ve changed into that directory, run CMake, e.g.

cmake -DTARGET_ARCH=x86_64-w64-mingw32 -DCOMPILER_TOOLCHAIN=clang -DGCC_ARCH=x86-64 -G Ninja -B build_x86_64

Add -DGCC_ARCH=x86-64-v3 to command-line if you want to compile clang with new x86-64-v3 instructions, like so

cmake -DTARGET_ARCH=x86_64-w64-mingw32 -DCOMPILER_TOOLCHAIN=clang -DGCC_ARCH=x86-64-v3 -G Ninja -B build_x86_64

Optional step before starting... This will download all packages at once.

ninja download

First, you need to build the toolchain. This takes some time (~ 1h), even on fast machines.

cd build_x86_64
ninja llvm       # build LLVM (take around ~1 hours)
ninja rustup     # build rust toolchain
ninja llvm-clang # build clang on specified target

After it has finished, you're ready to build upstrean/unmodified mpv with upstream/unmodified ffmpeg and all its dependencies:

ninja mpv

In case you want to compile upstream/unmodified mpv with the modified ffmpeg code that contains the old truehd passthrough logic:

ninja mpv-otruehd

If you want to compile upstream/unmodified mpv with the modified ffmpeg code that contains the new and patched truehd passthrough logic:

ninja mpv-ntruehd

If you are a Plex HTPC user and wan't to build a modified mpv with the old trueHD passthrough logic:

ninja mpv-plex-otruehd

... or modified mpv with the new and patched trueHD passthrough logic:

ninja mpv-plex-ntruehd

This will take a while, be patient.

The final build64 folder's size will be around ~12GB.

Building the other mpv version

After successfully building one version simply rerunning ninja for the other version does not really work. This is because of the same name of ffmpeg and how packages are detected. For the detection system, there is no difference, between ffmpeg-otruehd and ffmpeg-ntruehd, both are called ffmpeg. This leads to a version mismatch after recompiling the other version. To circumvent this, you have to run:

ninja ffmpeg-ntruehd-removeprefix ffmpeg-ntruehd-removeprefix

Also run this:

ninja nettle-removeprefix luajit-removeprefix fontconfig-removeprefix libsrt-removeprefix spirv-cross-removeprefix libzvbi-removeprefix vulkan-removeprefix libjxl-removeprefix

This is needed as for some reason those packages tend to fail when recompiling... Running the above ninja command may result in an error output, don´t worry that is expected. When this is done, re-run ninja for the other version you want to compile. Done!

Building Software (Second Time)

To build mpv for a second time. First go into the root mpv-winbuild-cmake directory and run:

git pull origin

This will fetch all code changes that have been made to the packages needed for building. After that run:

ninja update # perform git pull on all packages that used git

Better also run:

ninja ffmpeg-ntruehd-removeprefix ffmpeg-ntruehd-removeprefix

If it fails, also run:

ninja nettle-removeprefix luajit-removeprefix fontconfig-removeprefix libsrt-removeprefix spirv-cross-removeprefix libzvbi-removeprefix vulkan-removeprefix libjxl-removeprefix

After that, build mpv as usual:

ninja mpv / ninja mpv-plex-otruehd / ninja mpv-plex-ntruehd / mpv-otruehd / mpv-ntruehd

This will also build all packages that mpv depends on.

Compiling with GCC

Example:

cmake -DTARGET_ARCH=x86_64-w64-mingw32 \
-DGCC_ARCH=x86-64-v3 \
-DSINGLE_SOURCE_LOCATION="/home/user/packages" \
-DRUSTUP_LOCATION="/home/user/install_rustup" \
-G Ninja -B build64 -S mpv-winbuild-cmake

This cmake command will create build64 folder for x86_64-w64-mingw32. Set -DTARGET_ARCH=i686-w64-mingw32 for compiling 32-bit.

-DGCC_ARCH=x86-64-v3 will set -march option when compiling gcc with x86-64-v3 instructions. Other value like native, znver3 should work too.

Enter build64 folder and build toolchain like described. By default, it will be installed in install folder.

On WSL2, you might see it stuck with 100% disk usage and never finished. See below.

The final build64 folder's size will be around ~3GB.

Compiling with Clang

Supported target architecture (TARGET_ARCH) with clang is: x86_64-w64-mingw32 , i686-w64-mingw32 , aarch64-w64-mingw32. The aarch64 are untested.

Example:

cmake -DTARGET_ARCH=x86_64-w64-mingw32 \
-DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX="/home/user/clang_root" \
-DCOMPILER_TOOLCHAIN=clang \
-DGCC_ARCH=x86-64-v3 \
-DSINGLE_SOURCE_LOCATION="/home/user/packages" \
-DRUSTUP_LOCATION="/home/user/install_rustup" \
-DMINGW_INSTALL_PREFIX="/home/user/build_x86_64_v3/x86_64_v3-w64-mingw32" \
-G Ninja -B build_x86_64_v3 -S mpv-winbuild-cmake

The cmake command will create clang_root as clang sysroot where llvm tools installed. build_x86_64 is build directory to compiling packages.

cd build_x86_64
ninja llvm       # build LLVM (take around ~1 hours)
ninja rustup     # build rust toolchain
ninja llvm-clang # build clang on specified target
ninja mpv        # build mpv and all its dependencies

If you want add another target (ex. i686-w64-mingw32), change TARGET_ARCH and build folder.

cmake -DTARGET_ARCH=i686-w64-mingw32 \
-DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX="/home/user/clang_root" \
-DCOMPILER_TOOLCHAIN=clang \
-DSINGLE_SOURCE_LOCATION="/home/user/packages" \
-DRUSTUP_LOCATION="/home/user/install_rustup" \
-DMINGW_INSTALL_PREFIX="/home/user/build_i686/i686-w64-mingw32" \
-G Ninja -B build_i686 -S mpv-winbuild-cmake
cd build_i686
ninja llvm-clang # same as above

If you've changed GCC_ARCH option, you need to run:

ninja rebuild_cache

to update flags which will pass on gcc, g++ and etc.

Available Commands

Commands Description
ninja package compile a package
ninja clean remove all stamp files in all packages.
ninja download Download all packages' sources at once without compiling.
ninja update Update all git repos. When a package pulls new changes, all of its stamp files will be deleted and will be forced rebuild. If there is no change, it will not remove the stamp files and no rebuild occur. Use this instead of ninja clean if you don't want to rebuild everything in the next run.
ninja package-fullclean Remove all stamp files of a package.
ninja package-liteclean Remove build, clean stamp files only. This will skip re-configure in the next running ninja package (after the first compile). Updating repo or patching need to do manually. Ideally, all DEPENDS targets in package.cmake should be temporarily commented or deleted. Might be useful in some cases.
ninja package-removebuild Remove 'build' directory of a package.
ninja package-removeprefix Remove 'prefix' directory.
ninja package-force-update Update a package. Only git repo will be updated.

package is package's name found in packages folder.

Information about packages

  • Git/Hg

    • ANGLE
    • FFmpeg (unmodified upstream/patched)
    • xz
    • x264
    • x265 (multilib)
    • uchardet
    • rubberband (with libsamplerate)
    • opus
    • openal-soft
    • mpv (unmodified upstream/patched)
    • luajit
    • libvpx
    • libwebp
    • libpng
    • libsoxr
    • libzimg (with graphengine)
    • libdvdread
    • libdvdnav
    • libdvdcss
    • libudfread
    • libbluray
    • libunibreak
    • libass
    • libmysofa
    • lcms2
    • lame
    • harfbuzz
    • game-music-emu
    • freetype2
    • flac
    • opus-tools
    • mujs
    • libarchive
    • libjpeg
    • shaderc (with spirv-headers, spirv-tools, glslang)
    • vulkan-header
    • vulkan
    • spirv-cross
    • fribidi
    • nettle
    • curl
    • libxml2
    • amf-headers
    • avisynth-headers
    • nvcodec-headers
    • libvpl
    • megasdk (with termcap, readline, cryptopp, sqlite, libuv, libsodium)
    • aom
    • dav1d
    • libplacebo (with glad, fast_float, xxhash)
    • fontconfig
    • libbs2b
    • libssh
    • libsrt
    • libjxl (with brotli, highway)
    • libmodplug
    • uavs3d
    • davs2
    • libsixel
    • libdovi
    • libva
    • libzvbi
    • rav1e
    • libaribcaption
    • zlib (zlib-ng)
    • zstd
    • expat
    • openssl
    • libsdl2
    • speex
    • vorbis
    • ogg
    • bzip2
  • Zip

    • xvidcore (1.3.7)
    • lzo (2.10)
    • libopenmpt (0.7.6)
    • libiconv (1.17)
    • gmp (6.3.0)
    • vapoursynth (R65/R63)
    • mbedtls (3.5.0)
    • libressl (3.1.5)

WSL workaround

Place the file on specified location to limit ram & cpu usage to avoid getting stuck while building mpv.

# /etc/wsl.conf
[interop]
#enabled=false
appendWindowsPath=false

[automount]
enabled = true
options = "metadata"
mountFsTab = false

[user]
default=<user>
---------------------------------------
# C:\Users\<UserName>\.wslconfig
[wsl2]
memory=4GB
swap=0
pageReporting=false

Acknowledgements

This project was originally created and maintained lachs0r. Since then, it heavily modified to suit my own need.