## Getting started
-### Install git and python 3.5+
+### Install git and python 3.8+
-If you're on Linux, you probably already have these. On macOS, you can use the
+If you're on Linux, you probably already have these. On macOS, new versions of
+Xcode ship Python 3 already. If you're on an older Xcode, you can use the
[official Python installer](https://www.python.org/downloads/mac-osx/).
You can find [instructions for Windows below](#windows-prerequisites-setup).
### Install meson and ninja
-Meson 0.52 or newer is required.
-
-For cross-compilation Meson 0.54 or newer is required.
+Meson 0.62 or newer is required.
On Linux and macOS you can get meson through your package manager or using:
You can find [instructions for Windows below](#windows-prerequisites-setup).
+
+If you used the official Python installer on macOS instead of the Python
+3 shipped with Xcode, you might need to execute "Install Certificates.command"
+from the Python folder in the user Applications folder:
+
+```
+$ /Applications/Python\ 3.*/Install\ Certificates.command
+```
+
+Otherwise you will get this error when downloading meson wraps:
+
+```
+urllib.error.URLError: urlopen error [SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed
+```
+
### Build GStreamer and its modules
You can get all GStreamer built running:
```
-meson builddir
-ninja -C builddir
+meson setup builddir
+meson compile -C builddir
```
-This will automatically create the `build` directory and build everything
+This will automatically create the `builddir` directory and build everything
inside it.
-NOTE: On Windows, you *must* run this from [inside the Visual Studio command
-prompt](#running-meson-on-windows) of the appropriate architecture and version.
+NOTE: On Windows, meson will automatically detect and use the latest Visual
+Studio if GCC, clang, etc are not available in `PATH`. Use the `--vsenv`
+argument to force the use of Visual Studio.
### External dependencies
The plugin will be automatically enabled if possible, but you can ensure it by
passing `-Dbad=enabled -Dgst-plugins-bad:msdk=enabled` to `meson`.
+### Building plugins with (A)GPL-licensed dependencies
+
+Some plugins have GPL- or AGPL-licensed dependencies and will only be built
+if you have explicitly opted in to allow (A)GPL-licensed dependencies by
+passing `-Dgpl=enabled` to Meson.
+
+List of plugins with (A)GPL-licensed dependencies (non-exhaustive) in gst-plugins-bad:
+ - dts (DTS audio decoder plugin)
+ - faad (Free AAC audio decoder plugin)
+ - iqa (Image quality assessment plugin based on dssim-c)
+ - mpeg2enc (MPEG-2 video encoder plugin)
+ - mplex (audio/video multiplexer plugin)
+ - ofa (Open Fingerprint Architecture library plugin)
+ - resindvd (Resin DVD playback plugin)
+ - x265 (HEVC/H.265 video encoder plugin)
+
+List of plugins with (A)GPL-licensed dependencies (non-exhaustive) in gst-plugins-ugly:
+ - a52dec (Dolby Digital (AC-3) audio decoder plugin)
+ - cdio (CD audio source plugin based on libcdio)
+ - dvdread (DVD video source plugin based on libdvdread)
+ - mpeg2dec (MPEG-2 video decoder plugin based on libmpeg2)
+ - sidplay (Commodore 64 audio decoder plugin based on libsidplay)
+ - x264 (H.264 video encoder plugin based on libx264)
+
### Static build
Since *1.18.0* when doing a static build using `--default-library=static`, a
This will cause the features/plugins that are not registered to not be included in the final gstreamer-full library.
-This is an experimental feature, backward uncompatible changes could still be
+This is an experimental feature, backward incompatible changes could still be
made in the future.
+### Building documentation
+
+Documentation is not built by default because it is slow to generate. To build
+the documentation, first ensure that `hotdoc` is installed and `doc` option is
+enabled. For API documentation, gobject introspection must also be enabled.
+The special target `gst-doc` can then be used to (re)generate the documentation.
+
+```sh
+$ pip install hotdoc
+$ meson setup -Ddoc=enabled -Dintrospection=enabled builddir
+$ meson compile -C builddir gst-doc
+```
+
+NOTE: To visualize the documentation, `devhelp` can be run inside the development
+environment (see below).
+
# Development environment
## Development environment target
-GStreamer also contains a special `devenv` target that lets you enter an
-development environment where you will be able to work on GStreamer
-easily. You can get into that environment running:
+GStreamer ships a script that drops you into a development environment where
+all the plugins, libraries, and tools you just built are available:
```
-ninja -C builddir devenv
+./gst-env.py
```
-If your operating system handles symlinks, built modules source code will be
-available at the root for example GStreamer core will be in
-`gstreamer/`. Otherwise they will be present in `subprojects/`. You can simply
-hack in there and to rebuild you just need to rerun `ninja -C builddir`.
+Or with a custom builddir (i.e., not `build`, `_build` or `builddir`):
-NOTE: In the development environment, a fully usable prefix is also configured
-in `gstreamer/prefix` where you can install any extra dependency/project.
+```
+./gst-env.py --builddir <BUILDDIR>
+```
+
+You can also use `ninja devenv` inside your build directory to achieve the same
+effect. However, this may not work on Windows if meson has auto-detected the
+visual studio environment.
+
+Alternatively, if you'd rather not start a shell in your workflow, you
+can mutate the current environment into a suitable state like so:
+
+```
+./gst-env.py --only-environment
+```
+
+This will print output suitable for an sh-compatible `eval` function,
+just like `ssh-agent -s`.
An external script can be run in development environment with:
./gst-env.py external_script.sh
```
+NOTE: In the development environment, a fully usable prefix is also configured
+in `gstreamer/prefix` where you can install any extra dependency/project.
+
+For more extensive documentation about the development environment go to [the
+documentation](https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/documentation/installing/building-from-source-using-meson.html).
+
## Custom subprojects
We also added a meson option, `custom_subprojects`, that allows the user
-to provide a comma-separated list of subprojects that should be built
+to provide a comma-separated list of meson subprojects that should be built
alongside the default ones.
To use it:
-```
-cd subprojects
-git clone my_subproject
-cd ../build
-rm -rf * && meson .. -Dcustom_subprojects=my_subproject
-ninja
+```sh
+# Clone into the subprojects directory
+$ git -C subprojects clone my_subproject
+# Wipe dependency detection state, in case you have an existing build dir
+$ meson setup --wipe builddir -Dcustom_subprojects=my_subproject
+$ meson compile -C builddir
```
## Run tests
so:
```
-meson --prefix=/path/to/install/prefix builddir
-ninja -C builddir
+meson setup --prefix=/path/to/install/prefix builddir
+meson compile -C builddir
meson install -C builddir
```
-### Python 3.5+ on Windows
+### 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`:
### Ninja on Windows
-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:
+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`.
+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 `gst-build`.
+work with `GStreamer`.
You can use `pip3` to install Meson, same as Ninja above:
from the [git repository](https://github.com/mesonbuild/meson/) if you want to
use the latest master branch for some reason.
-**ARM64 native only**: You might need
-[native upstream ARM64 support fix](https://github.com/mesonbuild/meson/pull/7432)
-which is expected to be a part of Meson 0.55.1.
-If your Meson package version which was installed via `pip3` is lower than 0.55.1,
-then you need to use [the latest master branch](https://github.com/mesonbuild/meson/).
-
### Running Meson on Windows
-At present, to build with Visual Studio, you need to run Meson from inside the
-VS 2019 command prompt. Press `Start`, and search for `VS 2019`, and click on
-`x64 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS 2019`, or a prompt named similar to
-that:
-
-
+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:
-**ARM64 native only**: Since Visual Studio might not install dedicated command
-prompt for native ARM64 build, you might need to run `vcvarsx86_arm64.bat` on CMD.
-Please refer to [this document](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/building-on-the-command-line?view=vs-2019#developer_command_file_locations)
+```
+meson setup --vsenv builddir
+```
### Setup a mingw/wine based development environment on linux
```
BUILDDIR=$PWD/winebuild/
export WINEPREFIX=$BUILDDIR/wine-prefix/ && mkdir -p $WINEPREFIX
-# Setting the prefix is mandatory as it is used to setup symlinks during uninstalled development
+# 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 `ninja -C build` as the environment is not uninstalled.
+> instead of the usual `meson compile -C $BUILDDIR` as this is not in the
+> development environment.
-#### 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.
-You can get into the development environment the usual way:
+#### cross-mingw development environment
-```
-ninja -C $BUILDDIR/ devenv
-```
-
-Alternatively, if you'd rather not start a shell in your workflow, you
-can mutate the current environment into a suitable state like so:
+You can get into the development environment as usual with the gst-env.py
+script:
```
-gst-env.py --only-environment
+./gst-env.py
```
-This will print output suitable for an sh-compatible `eval` function,
-just like `ssh-agent -s`.
+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:
projects / platform / upstream / gstreamer.git / blobdiff