How to install VLC 1.1 by compiling from Git on Ubuntu Linux

In our previous articles, we have kept you in touch with the new upcoming features in VLC 1.1 - the new cool extensions, visualizations, its performance improvements and some cool facts. Basically, VLC 1.1 is going to be way better than ever. So, may be you would want to give it a try. In this howto, I will show you how to install the most recent version of VLC 1.1 from git on Ubuntu.

There are actually two ways to install VLC 1.1 in Ubuntu. One way is to use Webupd8's ppa archives in launchpad. You can directly use the ppa: nilarimogard/webupd8 (use this to install using ppa) to install vlc 1.1 in Ubuntu.

The other is by downloading the latest source code from VLC's git repositories and build and install vlc. Its a time-consuming procedure but this method might be useful for installing VLC 1.1 in other Linux distros.

Please note that, I have installed it successfully on Ubuntu 9.10, Karmic Koala. Similar steps can be taken for other Linux distributions to install VLC 1.1.

Follow the steps below:

1. Before proceeding with the installation you will need to install the dependencies required to install vlc. You can do this by executing the following command.

[shredder12]$ sudo apt-get build-dep vlc

Now, we need to install various other packages for buliding and compiling the latest tar we will download from videolan's git hub.

[shredder12]$ sudo apt-get install libtool build-essential automake-1.10 git-core libxcb-shm0-dev libxcb-xv0-dev libxcb-keysyms1-dev libx11-xcb-dev checkinstall

2. Now, lets download the latest source code from vlc's repository. Run the following command.

[shredder12]$ git clone git://git.videolan.org/vlc.git

If that doesn't work for you, due to blocked port issues etc. then you can directly install the tar snapshot of the latest source code from here. Now, you can untar the downloaded snapshot by running the following command.

[shredder12]$ tar -xvzf vlc-HEAD.tar.gz

3. So, lets start the installation process. First of all, go to the main directory.

[shredder12]$ cd vlc

and, run the following command.

[shredder12]$ ./bootstrap

This will bootstrap the source code and create the configuration files.

4. Now, run the ./configure to check for all the required tools and dependencies.

[shredder12]$ ./configure --prefix=/opt/vlc --exec-prefix=/usr

There are several options in ./configure to disable and enable various features of vlc while installing. You can see all of them by running

[shredder12]$ ./configure --help

and if you know what you are doing, you an use those options as per your need.

5. Once you are done with ./configure, its time for compilation. Run make

[shredder12]$ make  [see below]

Please note one thing, while running 'make', you might end up with this error.

LUA byte compiler missing.
make[2]: *** [lua/intf/luac.luac] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/sahni/Downloads/vlc/share'
make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/sahni/Downloads/vlc'
make: *** [all] Error 2

I am not sure if this is some kind of bug or not but I had it while installing and this is the fix.

[shredder12]$ cd share

[shredder12]$ for f in `find . | grep '\.lua$'`; do f2=`echo $f | sed 's/lua$/luac/g'`; ln -sf `basename $f` $f2; done $

Run "make" now.

6. This will take a lot of time. Once this is finished, you can either install vlc by running "make install".

[shredder12]$ sudo make install

or by using checkinstall (which is preferred). Checkinstall is used to keep a track of your local installation and produce a binary package to let it manage with your packet management software.

[shredder12]$ sudo checkinstall --fstrans=no --install=yes --pkgname=vlc --pkgversion "1:1.1.0-git`date +%Y%m%d`-0.0ubuntu2" --default

This will produce a .deb package of vlc in the same directory. Now, you can preserve it and delete the rest of the ~400Mb Installation source folder.

Now, you should have vlc 1.1 up and running. Enjoy!