xLights Linux build instructions ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ xLights can be built and run on Linux, Mac OS/X, or Windows. This document describes how **developers** should set up their tool chain to build xLights on Linux. Ubuntu packages are provided for users at https://code.launchpad.net/~chris-debenham/+archive/ubuntu/xlights xLights is written in C++ and uses the wxWidgets library as a compatibility layer across operating systems. The minimum required version of wxWidgets for xLights is v3.1.5. This can be compiled from source or installed via packages if they are available for your distribution. The provided makefile will download and build wxWidgets if needed - including application of a small patch from the end of this file to fix the sizing of bitmap buttons. SDL2 needs to be 2.0.5 or later. A precompiled libliquidfun.a.`uname -p` library and QM Vamp plugins are included for i686, x86_64 and aarm64 - for other platforms it would need to be recompiled from https://github.com/google/liquidfun == Building for linux via docker container == If you wish to build for linux from other platforms or without having to touch your local install you can use Docker to test building To setup the nessecary docker image you can checkout the build file from git and build directly via: docker build -t xlights-build https://github.com/xLightsSequencer/xlights-build-docker.git This will leave you with a suitable base image Once this is setup you can build xLights via: docker run --name buildvm xlights-build /bin/bash Recipe If you want to build the appimage you can use: docker run --name buildvm xlights-build /bin/bash Recipe.appimage If you want to create a fresh build then the container can be removed with: docker rm buildvm == Building locally from source == These instructions have been tested on the following distributions: - Ubuntu 22.04 - Fedora 38 Instructions for other Linux distributions will vary. a) Using Software Manager (or apt-get or rpm), install the following packages. (Fedora packages will be named differently and have 'devel' instead of 'dev' in their name) build-essential libgtk-3-dev libgstreamer1.0-dev libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-dev freeglut3-dev libavcodec-dev libavformat-dev libswscale-dev libsdl2-dev libportmidi-dev libzstd-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libltc-dev liblua5.3-dev libwebp-dev cbp2make (optional but recommended if compiling from git) Example command to install packages on Ubuntu sudo apt-get install g++ gcc build-essential libgtk-3-dev libgstreamer1.0-dev libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-dev freeglut3-dev libavcodec-dev libavformat-dev libswscale-dev libsdl2-dev libavutil-dev libportmidi-dev libzstd-dev libwebp-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libltc-dev liblua5.3-dev wget git cbp2make Example commands to install packages on Fedora 38 Fedora 38+ defaults to "ffmpeg-free" library to switch to full ffmpeg run: sudo dnf swap ffmpeg-free ffmpeg --allowerasing Note: with Fedora cbp2make is not avalible in an offical repo, you must build and install it manually: sudo dnf install doxygen git clone https://github.com/mirai-computing/cbp2make.git cd cbp2make make -f cbp2make.cbp.mak.unix sudo install -m 755 -p -D bin/Release/cbp2make /usr/local/bin/cbp2make Install other packages: sudo dnf install https://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm https://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm sudo dnf install gcc-c++ gtk3-devel gstreamer1-devel gstreamer1-plugins-base-devel freeglut-devel gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free-devel ffmpeg-devel SDL2-devel portmidi-devel libzstd-devel libwebp-devel curl-devel libltc-devel lua-devel Note: newer versions of libportmidi combined the .so files. Easiest workaround is to add a sym link to the combine .so file: sudo ln -s /usr/lib64/libportmidi.so /usr/lib64/libporttime.so b) Get the xLights source code by opening a terminal window and typing the following: git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/xLightsSequencer/xLights.git xLights xLights can be built 2 ways on Linux. First, you can use the supplied makefile to build it. This is sufficient to get xLights running, but you will be limited in what source code modifications you can make. Minor code changes or enhancements will be OK. The second way to build is to install the Code::Blocks IDE and compile xLights within the IDE. If you plan on modifying xLights yourself, this may be the easiest way to go. To build xLights using the supplied makefile proceed to step 'c'. To build using Code::Blocks, proceed to step 'd'.: c) Build xLights using the supplied makefiles: Build using the simplified top-level Makefile in the main xLights directory. If wxWidgets 3.1 is not available then as part of this wxWidgets 3.1 will be downloaded, compiled statically linked to xLights $ make Then install xLights to the default /usr/local/bin location as root: # make install To run the clean command: $ make clean To uninstall the xLights binary as root: # make uninstall Use `make SUDO= PREFIX=/someplace` to install to an alternative location without sudo as long as the path is writable as the current user. Set LD_LIBRARY_PATH=PREFIX/lib when running xLights. You may get some compiler warnings, however, the executable 'xLights' should get built in the ./bin directory. The proper dependencies are not currently setup in the makefile to trigger rebuilds when some files are modified, so you may have to run the clean command if your code does not build properly after making modifications to the source. If you want to build using Code::Blocks, proceed to step 'd'. d) Building xLights using Code::Blocks Install the Code::Blocks IDE using your distribution's package manager as long as it is version 16.01 or later. Otherwise, you can try downloading it directly from the Code::Blocks web site: http://www.codeblocks.org/downloads Also, you may need to install libwxsmithlib0 to enable visual layout. You will need to run 'make' from the command line once to build and patch wxwidgets. Then ensure that the wx-config command is in your PATH so that codeblocks can find it. The simplest way to do this is to go into the wxWidgets-3.1.5 directory and run 'sudo make install' Now you are ready to use Code::Blocks to build xLights by double-clicking on the xLights.cbp file. In order for the double-click to work, you may need to first right-click on the cbp file, select properties, and uncheck the box indicating that the file is runnable. Make sure you set the target to "Release Linux" before you build. That should be all you need to build xLights. If you get missing decoder messages related to gstreamer, a couple of things to try are: - sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras (substitute as appropriate for other *nices) - install "Play it slowly" - this app includes some gstreamer dependencies ============================================================================== If it is necessary to rebuild the xLights.cbp.mak makefile such as when new source files are added to the project, the command used to run cbp2make is: cbp2make -in xLights.cbp -cfg ../cbp2make.cfg -out xLights.cbp.mak --with-deps --keep-outdir --keep-objdir This will be run automatically at compile time if cbp2make is installed. ============================================================================== Troubleshooting: With so few Linux users and a general lack of experience in the platform I think it is worthwhile documenting some troubleshooting steps that can help determine issues. Hangs & Pauses -------------- To capture a log of systems calls strace -f -tt > strace.txt 2>&1 you may also consider adding -y or -yy to capture socket and file descriptor information if supported on your system These logs files are large and difficult to analyse but provide our best chance of debugging these types of problems without an interactive debugger. wxWidgets Bugginess (and possible xLights bugginess) There are some situations where limiting xLights to a single CPU can significantly minimise issues at the expense of parallelism. So if you are getting random issues you may want to try taskset -c 0