Deploy(installer maker) guide of C-Play

After building C-Play, with Craft and MPV, you would want to deploy it to a working directory, and optional build an installer.

Too make it standalone, you need to copy/install all dependencies including all DLL:s (For Qt, KF and MPV etc) and QML files alongside the executable.

First, make sure your CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX is set to the folder you want to copy everything to.

Shared “delay-loading” can be tricky to follow, so some manual try/error can be expected of which DLLs are needed for C-Play to start. For copying the correct source (as of Craft with 5.15 LTS) and MPV through current guide, simply enable CPLAY_INSTALL_DEPENDENCIES in CMake.

The following options become visible below (and executed in this order):

  • CPLAY_INSTALL_ITEMS_FROM_DATA: Does copy all files from C-Play data source into the install directory.

  • CPLAY_INSTALL_PLUGINS_FROM_CRAFT : Copy all plugins (dlls) from Craft build

  • CPLAY_INSTALL_QML_FROM_CRAFT : Copy all qml files from Craft build

  • CPLAY_INSTALL_PREDEFINED_DLL_LIST : Will copy a predefined list of DLLs from Craft and MPV bin folders (made manually and then printed with “dir /b *.dll > dll_list.txt”). The easiest approach of generating your own (if this does not work), is coping all dlls from craft etc to the bin directory, launch C-Play and then try to delete all dlls. The ones that cannot be deleted is the ones to keep.

  • CPLAY_INSTALL_GET_RUNTIME_DEPENDENCIES: Runs a cmake command to look for any direct dependencies of C-Play, in the QMAKE/CRAFT and MPV build directories. To complete the pre-defined list (which only fetches from CRAFT/QMAKE directory). NOTE: On Windows 11, this seems to copy over many unnecessary DLLs that cause bad behavior and crashes (when in wrong position). So should not be used, use CPLAY_INSTALL_DLLS_FROM_PATHS below instead.

  • CPLAY_INSTALL_DLLS_FROM_PATHS: This option copies all DLLs located in the CPLAY_INSTALL_DLLS_FROM_PATH_LIST variable to the INSTALL/bin folder. These are copied from first to last in the list. First time this variable is created, it will fill the list with paths based on the location of various dependencies. The protocol is then to launch C-Play and then try to delete all dlls. The ones that cannot be deleted is the ones to keep.

Run INSTALL from Visual Studio to trigger a complete install/copy operation for each of the above options. Then your CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX/bin should include a working standalone solution of C-Play.

  • NOTE: Remember to remove the Visual Redist DLLs which might be present in the directory.
concrt*.dll	Concurrency Runtime Library for native code
msvcp*.dll	C++ Standard Library for native code
vcamp*.dll	AMP Library for native code
vcomp*.dll	OpenMP Library for native code
vcruntime*.dll	Runtime Library for native code

Build installer

After INSTALL has been run in Visual Studio, it is time to make an installer following this steps:

  1. Download latest Visual Studio Re-dist to the /bin folder to be launched during installation of C-Play.

  2. Run the “CPlay_Pack.nsi* script, now present in the install directory to make an installer.

  3. The installer is now ready…

Note: It’s recommended to also copy the mpv.exe into the /bin folder before making the installer, as this is a useful tool for looking into media specifics.