+
+## Windows Prerequisites Setup
+
+On Windows, some of the components may require special care.
+
+### Git for Windows
+
+Use the [Git for Windows](https://gitforwindows.org/) installer. It will
+install a `bash` prompt with basic shell utils and up-to-date git binaries.
+
+During installation, when prompted about `PATH`, you should select the
+following option:
+
+![Select "Git from the command line and also from 3rd-party software"](/data/images/git-installer-PATH.png)
+
+### Python 3.8+ on Windows
+
+Use the [official Python installer](https://www.python.org/downloads/windows/).
+You must ensure that Python is installed into `PATH`:
+
+![Enable Add Python to PATH, then click Customize Installation](/data/images/py-installer-page1.png)
+
+You may also want to customize the installation and install it into
+a system-wide location such as `C:\PythonXY`, but this is not required.
+
+### Ninja on Windows
+
+If you are using Visual Studio 2019 or newer, Ninja is already provided.
+
+In other cases, the easiest way to install Ninja on Windows is with `pip3`,
+which will download the compiled binary and place it into the `Scripts`
+directory inside your Python installation:
+
+```
+pip3 install ninja
+```
+
+You can also download the [official release](https://github.com/ninja-build/ninja/releases)
+and place it into `PATH`, or use MSYS2.
+
+### Meson on Windows
+
+**IMPORTANT**: Do not use the Meson MSI installer since it is experimental and known to not
+work with `GStreamer`.
+
+You can use `pip3` to install Meson, same as Ninja above:
+
+```
+pip3 install meson
+```
+
+Note that Meson is written entirely in Python, so you can also run it as-is
+from the [git repository](https://github.com/mesonbuild/meson/) if you want to
+use the latest master branch for some reason.
+
+### Running Meson on Windows
+
+Since version 0.59.0, Meson automatically activates the Visual Studio
+environment on Windows if no other compilers (gcc, clang, etc) are found. To
+force the use of Visual Studio in such cases, you can use:
+
+```
+meson setup --vsenv builddir
+```
+
+### Setup a mingw/wine based development environment on linux
+
+#### Install wine and mingw
+
+##### On fedora x64
+
+``` sh
+sudo dnf install mingw64-gcc mingw64-gcc-c++ mingw64-pkg-config mingw64-winpthreads wine
+```
+
+FIXME: Figure out what needs to be installed on other distros
+
+#### Get meson from git
+
+This simplifies the process and allows us to use the cross files
+defined in meson itself.
+
+``` sh
+git clone https://github.com/mesonbuild/meson.git
+```
+
+#### Build and install
+
+```
+BUILDDIR=$PWD/winebuild/
+export WINEPREFIX=$BUILDDIR/wine-prefix/ && mkdir -p $WINEPREFIX
+# Setting the prefix is mandatory as it is used to setup symlinks within the development environment
+meson/meson.py $BUILDDIR --cross-file meson/cross/linux-mingw-w64-64bit.txt -Dgst-plugins-bad:vulkan=disabled -Dorc:gtk_doc=disabled --prefix=$BUILDDIR/wininstall/ -Djson-glib:gtk_doc=disabled
+meson/meson.py install -C $BUILDDIR/
+```
+
+> __NOTE__: You should use `meson install -C $BUILDDIR` each time you make a change
+> instead of the usual `meson compile -C $BUILDDIR` as this is not in the
+> development environment.
+
+Alternatively, you can also use `mingw64-meson` on Fedora, which is a wrapper
+script that sets things up to use Fedora's cross files and settings. However,
+the wrapper script can be buggy in some cases.
+
+#### cross-mingw development environment
+
+You can get into the development environment as usual with the gst-env.py
+script:
+
+```
+./gst-env.py
+```
+
+See [above](#development-environment) for more details.
+
+After setting up [binfmt] to use wine for windows binaries,
+you can run GStreamer tools under wine by running:
+
+```
+gst-launch-1.0.exe videotestsrc ! glimagesink
+```
+
+[binfmt]: http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man5/binfmt.d.5.html