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Compilation Guide

Last edited by Henrik Gramner

The dav1d AV1 decoder uses the Meson build system. To compile dav1d, Meson 0.49 or higher and Ninja are required.

Basic compilation

Linux native compilation

Check out the source code using git:

git clone https://code.videolan.org/videolan/dav1d.git

Change to the dav1d directory and configure the build with meson:

cd dav1d
meson build

To compile it, change to the build directory and run ninja:

cd build
ninja

Windows native compilation

Install msys2, follow the instructions on the page.

Open a mingw64 msys2 shell and install the required packages:

pacman -S git mingw-w64-x86_64-meson mingw-w64-x86_64-ninja gcc nasm

Then follow the Linux native compilation steps.

Run tests

To run the tests, such as checkasm, use the meson test subcommand from the build dir:

meson test -v

Compilation options

The dav1d build has some options to change aspects of the build, additionally meson provides a number of convenient options too. These options can either be set on an already configure build by invoking meson configure -Doption_name=value in the build dir or by passing them on the initial meson command that configures the build dir.

Running meson configure in the build dir shows the current configuration state. After changing a value, meson will automatically reconfigure as necessary on next ninja invocation.

Some useful meson options:

  • buildtype: Change the build type (debug, debugoptimized, release)
  • prefix: Change the prefix where dav1d will be installed
  • b_sanitize: Enable a sanitizer (none, address, thread, undefined, memory)
  • default_library: Change if a shared or static library should be built or both
  • c_args=... and c_link_args=... to pass custom CFLAGS/LDFLAGS.

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