Cerbero is a cross-platform build aggregator for Open Source projects that builds and creates native packages for different platforms, architectures and distributions. It supports both native compilation and cross compilation and can run on macOS, Linux, and Windows.

Projects are defined using recipe files (.recipe), which provide a description of the project being built such as name, version, licenses, sources and the way it's built. It also provide listing of files, which is later used for the packaging.

Packages are defined using package files (.package), describing the package name, version, license, maintainer and other fields used to create the packages. A package wraps a list of recipes, from which the list of files belonging to the package will be extracted.

Cerbero provides bootstrapping facilities for all platforms, but it still needs a minimum base to bootstrap on top of.

On Linux, you will only need a distribution with python >= 3.5. Cerbero will use your package manager to install all other required packages during bootstrap.

On macOS you will need to have install the following software:

• XCode
• Python 3.5+ https://www.python.org/downloads/

Cerbero will build all other required packages during bootstrap.

The initial setup on Windows is somewhat longer since the required packages must be installed manually. Detailed steps on what you need to install are at the bottom of the page.

Despite the presence of setup.py this tool does not need installation. It is invoked via the cerbero-uninstalled script, which should be invoked as ./cerbero-uninstalled, or you can add the cerbero directory in your path and invoke it as cerbero-uninstalled.

Before using cerbero for the first time, you will need to run the bootstrap command. This command installs the missing parts of the build system using the packages manager when available, and also downloads the necessary toolchains when building for Windows or Android.

Note that this will take a while (a couple hours or even more on Windows).

$ ./cerbero-uninstalled bootstrap

# Help
$ ./cerbero-uninstalled --help

# Command-specific help
$ ./cerbero-uninstalled <command> --help

# List available recipes
$ ./cerbero-uninstalled list

# Build a recipe
$ ./cerbero-uninstalled build glib

# Force-rebuild a single recipe
$ ./cerbero-uninstalled buildone glib

# Create a package (this automatically builds all recipes in the package)
$ ./cerbero-uninstalled package gstreamer-1.0

If you're using Cerbero to cross-compile to iOS, Android, or Cross-MinGW, you must select the appropriate config file and pass it to all steps: bootstrap, build, package, etc.

For example if you're on Linux and you want to build for Android Universal, you must run:

# Bootstrap for Android Universal on Linux
$ ./cerbero-uninstalled -c config/cross-android-universal.cbc bootstrap

# Build everything and package for Android Universal
$ ./cerbero-uninstalled -c config/cross-android-universal.cbc package gstreamer-1.0

Here's a list of config files for each target machine:

Currently no cross targets are supported on Windows.

Cerbero controls optional and platform-specific features with variants. You can see a full list of available variants by running:

$ ./cerbero-uninstalled --list-variants

Some variants are enabled by default while others are not. You can enable a particular variant by doing one of the following:

• Either invoke cerbero-uninstalled with the -v argument, for example:

$ cerbero-uninstalled -v variantname [-c ...] package gstreamer-1.0

• Or, edit ~/.cerbero/cerbero.cbc and add variants = ['variantname'] at the bottom. Create the file if it doesn't exist.

Multiple variants can either be separated by a comma or with multiple -v arguments, for example the following are equivalent:

$ cerbero-uninstalled -v variantname1,variantname2 [-c ...] package gstreamer-1.0
$ cerbero-uninstalled -v variantname1 -v variantname2 [-c ...] package gstreamer-1.0

To explicitly disable a variant, use novariantname instead.

In the case of multiple enabling/disable of the same variant, then the last condition on the command line will take effect. e.g. if novariantname is last then variantname is disabled.

Starting with version 1.15.2, Cerbero has built-in support for building the Qt5 QML GStreamer plugin. You can toggle that on by enabling the qt5 variant.

You must also tell Cerbero where your Qt5 installation prefix is. You can do it by setting the QMAKE environment variable to point to the qmake that you want to use, f.ex. /path/to/Qt5.12.0/5.12.0/ios/bin/qmake

When building for Android Universal, instead of QMAKE, you must set the QT5_PREFIX environment variable pointed to the directory inside your prefix which contains all the android targets, f.ex. /path/to/Qt5.12.0/5.12.0.

Next, run package:

$ export QMAKE='/path/to/Qt5.12.0/5.12.0/<target>/bin/qmake'
$ ./cerbero-uninstalled -v qt5 [-c ...] package gstreamer-1.0

This will try to build the Qt5 QML plugin and error out if Qt5 could not be found or if the plugin could not be built. The plugin will be automatically added to the package outputted.

NOTE: The package outputted will not contain a copy of the Qt5 libraries in it. You must link to them while building your app yourself.

Starting with version 1.15.2, Cerbero has built-in support for building and packaging hardware codecs for Intel and Nvidia. If the appropriate variant is enabled, the plugin will either be built or Cerbero will error out if that's not possible.

For Intel, the variant to enable is intelmsdk which will build the msdk plugin.

You must set the INTELMEDIASDKROOT env var to point to your Intel Media SDK prefix, or you must have the SDK's pkgconfig prefix in PKG_CONFIG_PATH

On Windows, INTELMEDIASDKROOT automatically set by the installer. On Linux, if you need to set this, you must set it to point to the directory that contains the mediasdk include and lib64 dirs.

For Nvidia, the variant to enable is nvcodec which will build the nvenc and nvdec plugins.

If CUDA is not installed into the system prefix, You need to set CUDA_PATH to point to your CUDA SDK prefix. On Windows, this is done automatically by the installer.

On Windows, with CUDA v10 and newer, you must also set NVIDIA_VIDEO_CODEC_SDK_PATH to point to your Video Codec SDK prefix. There is no installer for this, so you must extract the SDK zip and set the env var to point to the path to the extracted folder.

Starting with version 1.15.2, Cerbero supports building all GStreamer recipes, all mandatory dependencies (such as glib, libffi, zlib, etc), and some external dependencies with Visual Studio. You must explicitly opt-in to this by enabling the visualstudio variant:

$ python ./cerbero-uninstalled -v visualstudio package gstreamer-1.0

If you already have a Cerbero build, it is highly recommended to run the wipe command before switching to building with Visual Studio.

Some plugins that require external dependencies will be automatically disabled when running in this mode.

Currently, most recipes that use Meson (btype = BuildType.MESON) and those that have the can_msvc recipe property set to True are built with Visual Studio.

These steps are necessary for using Cerbero on Windows.

Download the Windows executable installer and run it.

• On the first page of the installer, select the following:

• On the second page, the defaults are fine

• Third page, you must select the following options:

Download the Git for Windows installer and run it.

• First page is the license

• Next page is Select Components, the defaults are fine, enable whatever else you prefer

• Next Choosing the default editor used by Git, select whatever you prefer

• Next Adjusting your PATH environment, you must select as shown in the screenshot

• Next Choosing HTTPS transport backend, default is fine

• Next Configuring the line ending conversions, you must select as shown in the screenshot

• Next Configuring the terminal emulator, default is fine

• Next Configuring extra options, defaults are fine

Git will be installed at C:\Program Files\Git.

Download the mingw-get-setup executable installer and run it.

• First page, keep all the options as-is

• Second page will download the latest package catalogue and base packages

• Once done, the MinGW Installation Manager will open, select the following packages under Basic Setup:

Then, click on the Installation menu and select Apply Changes. MSYS will be installed at C:\MinGW.

IMPORTANT: After installation, you must create a shortcut on the desktop to C:\MinGW\msys\1.0\msys.bat which will run the MinGW shell. You must run Cerbero from inside that.

NOTE: Cerbero does not use the MinGW compiler toolchain shipped with MSYS. We download our own custom GCC toolchain during bootstrap.

NOTE: MSYS is not the same as MSYS2, and the GStreamer project does not support running Cerbero inside the MSYS2 environment. Things may work or they may break, and you get to keep the pieces.

This is needed for correctly generating import libraries for recipes built with MinGW. Both the Community build and the Professional build are supported.

You must install the latest Windows 10 SDK when installing Visual Studio as shown below. You do not need any older Windows SDKs.

You can find all versions of Visual Studio at: https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/older-downloads/

• CMake: http://www.cmake.org/cmake/resources/software.html

• WiX 3.11.1 installer: https://github.com/wixtoolset/wix3/releases/tag/wix3111rtm

You should add the cerbero git directory to the list of excluded folders in your anti-virus, or you will get random build failures when Autotools does file operations such as renames and deletions. It will also slow your build by about 3-4x.

Cerbero must be run in the MingGW shell, which is accessible from the main menu or desktop. If it is not, create a shortcut on the desktop to C:\MinGW\msys\1.0\msys.bat

The path to your $HOME must not contain spaces. If your Windows username contains spaces, you can create a new directory in /home and execute:

$ echo 'export HOME=/home/newdir' > ~/.profile

Then restart your shell and type cd to go to the new home directory.

Note that inside the shell, / is mapped to C:\Mingw\msys\1.0\