fstat13--PSCapture/docs/BUILD.md

PSCapture — build from source, step by step

🇮🇹 Versione italiana: BUILD.it.md

Everything needed to go from these sources to a working PSCapture.exe and a pscapture.elf for the console. Every command is written exactly as it is run, in order. Nothing here is optional magic — the order matters and each step is explained.

There are two halves, built in different places:

Half	Output	Where it builds	Toolchain
Console payload	payload/pscapture.elf	Docker (Linux container)	PS5 payload SDK (prospero-clang)
PC side	pc/pscapture.exe + pc/pscapture.dll	Windows	MinGW-w64 (gcc + windres)

---

Part 1 — The console payload

1.1 What you need

• Docker (Docker Desktop on Windows, or plain Docker on Linux/macOS).
• The PS5 payload SDK container image. This is the community PS5 payload SDK (prospero-clang, make, PS5_PAYLOAD_SDK set in the environment) baked into an image. On the development machine the image is tagged ps5sdk:18 — any name works, adjust the commands below to match yours.

Check the image is there:

docker images | grep ps5sdk

1.2 Build

From the repository root:

docker run --rm -v "$PWD/payload:/payload" -w /payload ps5sdk:18 make

On Windows PowerShell/cmd, give the full path instead of "$PWD/payload", e.g. -v "C:\Users\you\PSCapture\payload:/payload".

Result: payload/pscapture.elf (~175 KB).

The Makefile does the only thing that matters: compile main.c with the Prospero clang from the SDK and link the final ELF. No other inputs.

1.3 Optional — send it to the console

With the console jailbroken (payload loader on port 9021):

docker run --rm -v "$PWD/payload:/payload" -w /payload ps5sdk:18 \
    make deploy PS5_HOST=192.168.0.36

(or just push pscapture.elf with whatever loader you normally use).

What a healthy run looks like on the console:

• /data/pscapture.log appears and logs the startup,
• /data/pscapture.port appears containing the TCP port of the stream,
• the console pops the notification PSCapture is streaming on:PORT.

---

Part 2 — The PC side

2.1 What you need (Windows)

MinGW-w64 64-bit with gcc and windres. On the development machine:

winget install BrechtSanders.WinLibs.POSIX.UCRT

(or any MSYS2 mingw-w64-x86_64-gcc install — pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-gcc).

Check both tools are on PATH:

gcc --version
windres --version

2.2 Build — the order is mandatory

pscapture.res is a bundle that embeds files as they are on disk: the icon, the console payload and the capture-card driver. So the DLL must be built before the resource step, and the payload must be sitting in pc/ when windres runs. Build the EXE last.

cd pc

# 0) bring the freshly built payload next to the .rc (it gets embedded as-is)
cp ../payload/pscapture.elf .

# 1) the capture-card driver (DirectShow source filter)
gcc -O2 -shared -static -static-libgcc -o pscapture.dll ps5cam.c \
    -lole32 -loleaut32 -luser32 -ladvapi32 -lws2_32

# 2) bundle icon + payload + driver into one resource object
#    (pscapture.rc => 1 ICON pscapture.ico / 2 RCDATA pscapture.elf
#                     / 3 RCDATA pscapture.dll)
windres pscapture.rc -O coff -o pscapture.res

# 3) the app — one self-contained executable
gcc -O2 -mwindows -o pscapture.exe pscapture.c pscapture.res \
    -lws2_32 -lshell32 -ladvapi32 -luxtheme

2.3 Verify the build

# the driver must depend on system DLLs ONLY (no libgcc/libwinpthread):
objdump -p pscapture.dll | grep "DLL Name"

# sizes look right: exe ~500 KB, dll ~220 KB
ls -la pscapture.exe pscapture.dll

# both the payload and the driver are really inside the exe:
strings pscapture.exe | grep -c PSCapture

Run pscapture.exe: the window opens (UAC prompt → Yes), the log pane walks through driver check → payload extraction → deploy attempt. That is the same sequence described in docs/INSTALLER.md.

2.4 Gotchas (learned the hard way)

• -static -static-libgcc on the DLL is not cosmetic. Without it the driver can end up needing mingw runtime DLLs that are not on the system PATH when Windows (or another app) loads it — the classic "the specified module could not be found".
• Build order. windres reads pscapture.dll and pscapture.elf from pc/ at compile time. Rebuild the DLL → re-run windres → rebuild the EXE, every time. Forgetting the middle step ships an old driver inside the new exe.
• ASCII only in strings passed to the *A Win32 APIs (window titles, buttons, logs). UTF-8 bytes in an ANSI string render as mojibake.
• The manifest (pc/pscapture.manifest) is kept for reference only; the current build does not embed it — self-elevation is done in code (ShellExecuteEx … "runas"), which avoids mingw's .rsrc merge failure with multiple manifests.

2.5 Package a release

mkdir -p dist
cp pc/pscapture.exe pc/pscapture.dll dist/

pscapture.exe alone is enough for users (the DLL and the payload travel inside it). The bare pscapture.dll is attached for manual installs:

rundll32 "pscapture.dll",DllRegisterServer