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.

Firstly it is recommended that you remove any previous instances of xine form your system. You can do this using the following instructions. Here

$PREFIX

/usr/bin/xine

$PREFIX

/usr/bin/

  $ rm -r $PREFIX/share/xine
  $ rm -r $PREFIX/lib/xine
  $ rm $PREFIX/bin/xine
  $ rm $PREFIX/lib/libxine.*

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