Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
305 lines (210 loc) · 8 KB

README_LINUX.md

File metadata and controls

305 lines (210 loc) · 8 KB
Raw

Supercollider 3 for linux

Intro

SuperCollider is a synthesis engine (scsynth) and programming language (sclang), originally Mac-based but now very widely used on Linux (since Stefan Kersten ported the code in 2003). SuperCollider is free software under the GPL - its main homepage is at

http://supercollider.github.com

To get further information on supercollider usage or development, you might consider subscribing to the mailing lists

http://www.beast.bham.ac.uk/research/sc_mailing_lists.shtml

Build requirements

(most of these will be available in your linux distribution as packages )

Build requirements (optional features)

(most of these will be available in your linux distribution as packages)

Build requirements (debian users)

On debian (unstable) you can install the following packages and be set for building supercollider:

  • build-essential
  • libjack-dev or libjack-jackd2-dev
  • libsndfile1-dev
  • libasound2-dev
  • libavahi-client-dev
  • libicu-dev
  • libreadline6-dev
  • libfftw3-dev
  • libxt-dev
  • libudev-dev
  • libcwiid-dev (for wiimote support)
  • pkg-config
  • subversion (required by the Quarks class at run-time)
  • cmake (on some platforms, cmake >= 2.9 may require manual build)
  • qt5-default qt5-qmake qttools5-dev qttools5-dev-tools qtdeclarative5-dev libqt5webkit5-dev qtpositioning5-dev libqt5sensors5-dev

Building

  • to build supercollider with cmake, it is suggested to do out-of-tree builds in a specific build directory:

    $> mkdir build
$> cd build
$> cmake -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=/path/to/qt5 ..

  • to run the build process run:

    $> make

    The build process can be configured using the cmake program, cmake frontends like ccmake or cmake-gui, or by simply editing the build/CMakeCache.txt file.

    For example to enable a release build run the following in your build directory:

    $> cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ..

  • to install the whole program, run:

    $> make install

    For the above step you will probably need super-user privileges, e.g. using "sudo".

    Also, please run

    $> sudo ldconfig

    after installing for the first time.

  • to uninstall:

    $> make uninstall

Qt GUI

By default the Qt GUI support will be built into sclang. If you want to build without it configure cmake like this:

$> cmake -DSC_QT=OFF ..

Speeding up repeated builds

If you build SuperCollider repeatedly, we recommend installing ccache which can speed up re-compilation. Here is how to configure cmake to use it:

$> cmake -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=/usr/lib/ccache/g++ -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=/usr/lib/ccache/gcc ..

This assumes your ccache executables are installed into /usr/lib/ccache - you may need to change the path to reflect your installation.

Building a Debian package

The most up-to-date debian packaging rules are maintained by the Debian Multimedia team. Repository (with debian/ folder):

http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-multimedia/supercollider.git;a=summary

Running scsynth (standalone)

Run scsynth without options to get an option summary. Don't forget to start jackd before trying to use scsynth. If you want to add directories to supercollider's search path or assign default jack ports, set up your environment as described below.

You can specify the number of jack input/output channels created with the options -i and -o, respectively.

the -H option can be used to specify a jack server to connect to and to set the jack client identifier. The format is either

<SERVER-NAME>:<CLIENT-NAME>

or just

<CLIENT-NAME>

when connecting to the default server.

Running sclang

Supercollider comes with its own powerful IDE. Run it with:

$> scide

Alternatively you can use sclang in combination with your preferred text editor out of emacs/vim/gedit. See the README.md files in editors/* for installation and usage. Another alternative is to simply run the sclang executable which will provide a readline-based interface.

sclang executes the startup file ~/.config/SuperCollider/startup.scd after class library initialization. This file can contain statements to set up your supercollider environment, like setting default variables. An example can be found in linux/examples/sclang.sc.

You have to have a directory ~/.local/share/SuperCollider. This is where a synthdefs directory is automatically created. It is also the place to put Extensions to the class library, in a folder called Extensions.

The runtime directory is either the current working directory or the path specified with the -d option.

Environment

The jack audio driver interface is configured based on various environment variables:

  • SC_JACK_DEFAULT_INPUTS comma separated list of jack ports that scsynth's inputs should connect to by default

    $> export SC_JACK_DEFAULT_INPUTS="system:capture_1,system:capture_2"

    in order to connect the first ports of one jack client, it is possible to specify only the client name

    $> export SC_JACK_DEFAULT_INPUTS="system"

  • SC_JACK_DEFAULT_OUTPUTS comma separated list of jack ports that scsynth's outputs should be connected to by default.

    $> export SC_JACK_DEFAULT_OUTPUTS="system:playback_1,system:playback_2"

    In order to connect the first ports of one jack client, it is possible to specify only the client name

    $> export SC_JACK_DEFAULT_OUTPUTS="system"

Two additional environment variables substitute directories for the default search path for plugins and synth definitions, respectively. Directory names are separated by ':' as in the unix PATH variable:

  • SC_PLUGIN_PATH, SC_SYNTHDEF_PATH

    $> export SC_SYNTHDEF_PATH="./synthdefs:/home/sk/SuperCollider/synthdefs"

Reporting bugs

Please report bugs either to the sc-users or sc-dev mailing lists.

Contributors to this document

  • stefan kersten
  • andi pieper
  • maurizio umberto puxeddu
  • rohan drape
  • mario lang
  • john yates
  • nescivi (marije baalman)
  • dan stowell
  • tim blechmann

Outro

Thanks to james mccartney, for making this great piece of audio software publically and freely available.