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3. Compiling and installing Xine

The following instructions assume that you are installing from the source archives available from the Xine website. You will need at least two packages (named xine-lib.x.y.z.tar.gz and xine-ui.x.y.z.tar.gz). Ensure that both archives correspond to the same version of Xine.

Download the files to some convenient directory. Open a terminal and change to that directory. For example, if you downloaded the file to the directory /home/rich/src/ type the following:

  $ cd /home/rich/src/

The xine-lib file is the Xine run-time library which contains the code for the Xine engine itself. The xine-ui file contains a number of user interfaces for Xine. Currently there is a X-windows based graphical user interface and an experimental text-only interface (which renders video as so-called 'ASCII-art').

Type the following. It will extract the Xine library and user interface source archives. Substitute x.y.z for the version of Xine that you downloaded.

  $ tar xvzf xine-lib.x.y.z.tar.gz
  $ tar xvzf xine-ui.x.y.z.tar.gz

3.1 Where are the installation instructions?

The full installation instructions are included in the file INSTALL. What follows here are a brief cut-down version of the instructions.

3.2 Quick-start installation guide

Extract the Xine source archives as outlined in the section entitled Compiling and installing Xine. The xine-lib archive must be installed first. Change to the xine-lib.x.y.z directory and configure the source code for your machine and compile the code by typing:

  $ ./configure
  $ make

You may wish to use the ./configure --help command to see if you have to setup any machine specific options.

Now, as the user root, enter the following command:

  $ make all install

IMPORTANT! Before you can compile xine-ui, you may need to inform your system of the location of the xine libraries, you may need to set the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable to the directory you installed the Xine library and/or run the ldconfig program. For example, if you had installed xine-lib to /usr/local, you may need to enter the following command before compiling xine-ui.

  $ export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH

Once the Xine library is installed, you can repeat these steps with the xine-ui.x.y.z directory.

3.3 Installing Xine in a different directory

To install Xine in, for example, the directory /usr/local/xine, use the following option to configure

  $ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/xine

and, as root enter

  $ make install

3.4 How can I supply additional flags to the C-compiler?

You can do so by setting the GLOBAL_CFLAGS variable and then run ./configure again.

This can be useful to specify additional include paths or library paths to the compiler. For example:

  $ export GLOBAL_CFLAGS="-I/usr/include -L/home/guenter/xine_libs"

3.5 Pre-built binaries

If you do not wish to compile Xine from source, there are several pre-built `packages' available from the Xine web-site. Also there are several packages containing common third-party plugins and patches available at http://cambuca.ldhs.cetuc.puc-rio.br/~jcm/skyblade/.

Note that there are other methods of installing packages, you may wish to use graphical programmes such as kpackage.

Debian packages (.deb)

If you are using the `unstable' branch of Debian, you can install Xine by using the following command as root:

  $ apt-get install xine-ui

Red-Hat packages (.rpm)

Download the RPMs from the Xine web-site and enter the following command as root, substituting in the name of the file you downloaded.

  $ rpm -ivh xine-lib.x.x.x.rpm xine-ui.x.x.x.rpm


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