path: root/DOCS/xml/en/ports.xml

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<chapter id="ports" xreflabel="Ports">
<title>Ports</title>

<sect1 id="linux">
<title>Linux</title>
<para>
The main development platform is Linux on x86, although
<application>MPlayer</application> works on many other Linux ports.
Binary packages of MPlayer are available from several sources. However,
<emphasis role="bold">none of these packages are supported</emphasis>.
Report problems to the authors, not to us.
</para>

<sect2 id="debian">
<title>Debian packaging</title>
<para>
To build a Debian package, run the following command in the MPlayer
source directory:
<screen>fakeroot debian/rules binary</screen>
As root you can then install the <filename>.deb</filename> package as usual:
<screen>dpkg -i ../mplayer_<replaceable>version</replaceable>.deb</screen>
</para>

<para>
Christian Marillat has been making unofficial Debian MPlayer, MEncoder and font
packages for a while, you can (apt-)get them from his
<ulink url="http://marillat.free.fr/">homepage</ulink>.
</para>
</sect2>

<sect2 id="rpm">
<title>RPM packaging</title>
<para>
Dominik Mierzejewski created and maintains official Red Hat RPM packages of
<application>MPlayer</application>. They are available from his
<ulink url="http://www.piorunek.pl/~dominik/linux/pkgs/mplayer/">homepage</ulink>.
</para>

<para>
Mandrake RPM packages are available from the <ulink url="http://plf.zarb.org/">P.L.F.</ulink>.
SuSE includes a crippled version of MPlayer in their distribution. If you want all the features
you will have to install from source.
</para>
</sect2>

<sect2 id="arm">
<title>ARM</title>
<para>
MPlayer works on Linux PDAs with ARM CPU e.g. Sharp Zaurus, Compaq Ipaq. The
easiest way to obtain MPlayer is to get it from one of the
<ulink url="http://www.openzaurus.org">OpenZaurus</ulink> package feeds. If
you want to compile it yourself, you should look at the
<ulink url="http://openzaurus.bkbits.net:8080/buildroot/src/packages/mplayer?nav=index.html|src/.|src/packages">MPlayer</ulink>
and the
<ulink url="http://openzaurus.bkbits.net:8080/buildroot/src/packages/libavcodec?nav=index.html|src/.|src/packages">libavcodec</ulink>
directory in the OpenZaurus distribution buildroot. These always have the latest
Makefile and patches used for building a CVS MPlayer with libavcodec.
If you need a GUI frontend, you can use xmms-embedded.
</para>
</sect2>
</sect1>

<sect1 id="bsd">
<title>*BSD</title>
<para>
<application>MPlayer</application> runs on FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD,
BSD/OS and Darwin. There are ports/pkgsrc/fink/etc versions of MPlayer
available that are probably easier to use than our raw sources.
</para>

<para>
To build MPlayer you will need GNU make (gmake - native BSD make
will not work) and a recent version of binutils.
</para>

<para>
If MPlayer complains about not finding <filename>/dev/cdrom</filename> or
<filename>/dev/dvd</filename>, create an appropiate symbolic link:
<screen>ln -s /dev/(your_cdrom_device) /dev/cdrom</screen>
</para>

<para>
To use Win32 DLLs with MPlayer you will need to re-compile the kernel with
&quot;<envar>option USER_LDT</envar>&quot; (unless you run FreeBSD-CURRENT,
where this is the default).
</para>


<sect2 id="freebsd">
<title>FreeBSD</title>
<para>
If your CPU has SSE, recompile your kernel with
&quot;<envar>options CPU_ENABLE_SSE</envar>&quot; (FreeBSD-STABLE or kernel
patches required).
</para>
</sect2>

<sect2 id="openbsd">
<title>OpenBSD</title>
<para>
Due to limitations in different versions of gas (relocation vs MMX), you
will need to compile in two steps: First make sure that the non-native as
is first in your <envar>$PATH</envar> and do a <command>gmake -k</command>, then
make sure that the native version is used and do <command>gmake</command>.
</para>
</sect2>
</sect1>

<sect1 id="solaris">
<title>Solaris</title>
<para>
<application>MPlayer</application> should work on Solaris 2.6 or newer.
</para>

<para>
On <emphasis role="bold">UltraSPARCs</emphasis>, MPlayer takes advantage of their
<emphasis role="bold">VIS</emphasis> extensions (equivalent to MMX), currently
only in <emphasis>libmpeg2</emphasis>, <emphasis>libvo</emphasis> and
<emphasis>libavcodec</emphasis>, but not in mp3lib. You can watch a VOB file
on a 400MHz CPU. You'll need
<ulink url="http://www.sun.com/sparc/vis/mediaLib.html">mLib</ulink> installed.
</para>

<para>
To build the package you will need GNU <application>make</application>
(<filename>gmake</filename>, <filename>/opt/sfw/gmake</filename>), native
Solaris make will not work. Typical error you get when building with
Solaris' make instead of GNU make:
<screen>
   % /usr/ccs/bin/make
   make: Fatal error in reader: Makefile, line 25: Unexpected end of line seen
</screen>
</para>

<para>
On Solaris SPARC, you need the GNU C/C++ Compiler; it does not matter if
GNU C/C++ compiler is configured with or without the GNU assembler.
</para>

<para>
On Solaris x86, you need the GNU assembler and the GNU C/C++ compiler,
configured to use the GNU assembler! The mplayer code on the x86 platform
makes heavy use of MMX, SSE and 3DNOW! instructions that cannot be compiled
using Sun's assembler <filename>/usr/ccs/bin/as</filename>.
</para>

<para>The <filename>configure</filename> script tries to find out, which
assembler program is used by your &quot;gcc&quot; command (in case the autodetection
fails, use the <option>--as=/whereever/you/have/installed/gnu-as</option>
option to tell the <filename>configure</filename> script where it can find GNU
"as" on your system).
</para>

<para>
Error message from <filename>configure</filename> on a Solaris x86 system using
GCC without GNU assembler:
<screen>
   % configure
   ...
   Checking assembler (/usr/ccs/bin/as) ... , failed
   Please upgrade(downgrade) binutils to 2.10.1...
</screen>
(Solution: Install and use a gcc configured with <option>--with-as=gas</option>)
</para>

<para>
Typical error you get when building with a GNU C compiler that does not use GNU as:
<screen>
   % gmake
   ...
   gcc -c -Iloader -Ilibvo -O4 -march=i686 -mcpu=i686 -pipe -ffast-math
        -fomit-frame-pointer  -I/usr/local/include   -o mplayer.o mplayer.c
   Assembler: mplayer.c
   "(stdin)", line 3567 : Illegal mnemonic
   "(stdin)", line 3567 : Syntax error
   ... more "Illegal mnemonic" and "Syntax error" errors ...
</screen>
</para>

<para>
Due to bugs in Solaris 8, you may not be able to play DVD discs larger than 4 GB:
</para>

<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para>
The sd(7D) driver on Solaris 8 x86 has a bug when accessing a disk block >4GB
on a device using a logical blocksize != DEV_BSIZE (i.e. CD-ROM and DVD media).
Due to a 32Bit int overflow, a disk address modulo 4GB is accessed
(<ulink url="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/solarisonintel/message/22516"/>).
This problem does not exist in the SPARC version of Solaris 8.
</para></listitem>

<listitem><para>
A similar bug is present in the hsfs(7FS) filesystem code (aka ISO9660),
hsfs may not not support partitions/disks larger than 4GB, all data is
accessed modulo 4GB
(<ulink url="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/solarisonintel/message/22592"/>).
The hsfs problem can be fixed by installing patch 109764-04 (sparc) / 109765-04 (x86).
</para></listitem>
</itemizedlist>

<para>
On Solaris with an UltraSPARC CPU, you can get some extra speed by using the
CPU's VIS instructions for certain time consuming operations. VIS acceleration
can be used in MPlayer by calling functions in Sun's
<ulink url="http://www.sun.com/sparc/vis/mediaLib.html">mediaLib</ulink>.
</para>

<para>
VIS accelerated operations from mediaLib are used for mpeg2 video decoding
and for color space conversion in the video output drivers.
</para>
</sect1>

<sect1 id="sgi">
<title>Silicon Graphics / Irix</title>
<para>
You can either try to install the GNU install program, and (if you did
not put it in your global path) then point to the location with:
<screen>./configure --install-path=PATH</screen>
</para>

<para>
Or you can use the default install delivered with IRIX 6.5 in which case
you will have to edit the <filename>Makefile</filename> by hand a little bit.
Change the following two lines:
<programlisting>
  $(INSTALL) -c -m 644 DOCS/mplayer.1 $(MANDIR)/man1/mplayer.1

  $(INSTALL) -c -m 644 etc/codecs.conf $(CONFDIR)/codecs.conf
</programlisting>
to:
<programlisting>
  $(INSTALL) -m 644 mplayer.1 $(MANDIR)/man1/

  $(INSTALL) -m 644 codecs.conf $(CONFDIR)/
</programlisting>
And then do (from within the MPlayer source dir):
<screen>cp DOCS/mplayer.1 . ; cp etc/codecs.conf .</screen>
and then go on with building and installing.
</para>
</sect1>

<sect1 id="qnx">
<title>QNX</title>
<para>
Works. You'll need to download SDL for QNX, and install it. Then run
<application>MPlayer</application> with <option>-vo sdl:photon</option>
and <option>-ao sdl:nto</option> options, and it should be fast.
</para>

<para>
The <option>-vo x11</option> output will be even slower than on Linux,
since QNX has only X <emphasis>emulation</emphasis> which is VERY slow. Use SDL.
</para>
</sect1>

<sect1 id="cygwin">
<title>Cygwin</title>
<para>
The Cygwin port is still in its infancy. Currently there is no support for
Win32 DLLs or OpenGL. SDL is known to distort sound and image or crash on
some systems. <ulink url="../../tech/patches.txt">Patches</ulink>
are always welcome. Best results are achieved with the native DirectX video
output driver (<option>-vo directx</option>) and the native Windows waveout
audio driver (<option>-ao win32</option>). You should also check out the
<ulink url="http://mplayerhq.hu/mailman/listinfo/mplayer-cygwin/">mplayer-cygwin</ulink>
mailing list for help and latest information.
</para>

<para>
You have to copy or symlink <filename>etc/cygwin_inttypes.h</filename>
from the MPlayer source directory to <filename>/usr/include/inttypes.h</filename>
in order to make MPlayer compile.
</para>

<para>
To get native DirectX video, download
<ulink url="http://www.videolan.org/vlc/dx7headers.tgz">DirectX 7 header files</ulink>,
extract them to <filename>/usr/include/</filename> or <filename>/usr/local/include/</filename>
and recompile. If the image is distorted, try turning off hardware acceleration with
<option>-vo directx:noaccel</option>
</para>

<para>
Instructions and files for making SDL run under Cygwin can be found on the
<ulink url="http://www.libsdl.org/extras/win32/cygwin/">libsdl site</ulink>.
</para>

<para>
You can play VCDs by playing the .DAT or .MPG files that Windows exposes on
VCDs. It works like this (adjust for the drive letter of your CD-ROM):
<screen>mplayer d:/mpegav/avseq01.dat</screen>
<screen>mplayer /cygdrive/d/MPEG2/AVSEQ01.MPG</screen>
</para>

<para>
DVDs also work, just set the DVD device correctly to whatever your CD-ROM
device is:
<screen>mplayer dvd://&lt;title&gt; -dvd-device '\\.\d:'</screen>
</para>

<para>
QuickTime DLLs have also been reported to work. Compile with
<option>--enable-qtx-codecs</option> and put the codecs into
the default Windows DLL location, <filename class="directory">C:\WINNT\system32</filename>
or <filename class="directory">C:\Windows\system</filename> depending on your
Windows version.
</para>
</sect1>

</chapter>