jack_mixer/INSTALL.md

Installation

jack_mixer uses the meson build system for building, installation and packaging.

Requirements

Build requirements:

• GCC (version >= 9.x recommended)
• meson >= 0.64.0
• ninja
• Python headers
• JACK headers
• glib2 headers
• gettext
• Cython (optional, required if building from a Git checkout)
• docutils (optional, rst2man required if building from a Git checkout)

Runtime requirements:

• Python >= 3.8
• Pygobject
• pycairo
• JACK library and server

Optional run-time dependencies:

• appdirs (for saving your preferences, strongly recommended)
• NSM (for NSM session management support)

The run-time Python dependencies are checked by meson when setting up the build directory. To disable this, use the -Dcheck-py-modules=false option to meson setup.

Building

Building with meson always happens in a special build directory. Set up the build in the builddir sub-directory and configure the build with:

meson setup builddir --prefix=/usr --buildtype=release

Then build the software with:

meson compile -C builddir

Note: For building jack_mixer from source on debian / Ubuntu derrived Linux distributions, please refer to this wiki page. If possible, use your distribution's package manager to install jack_mixer.

Installation

[sudo] meson install -C builddir

Note for packagers: to install all files under a destination directory other than the filesystem root, set the DESTDIR environment variable for meson install.

For example:

DESTDIR="/tmp/jack_mixer-install-root" meson install -C builddir

Build options

There are several project-specific options to configure the build and the resulting installation. To see all supported options (including standard meson options) and their possible values run:

meson configure

If you have already set up the build directory, you can append its name to see the current values of all options for this build configuration.

To change an option, pass the build directory and -Doption=value to meson setup or meson configure. For example:

meson configure builddir -Dgui=disabled

Building a Python wheel (only for special needs)

Note: Due to limitations of Python's build ecosystem, the wheel packages built with the instructions given here, will not contain any files used for system desktop integration, e.g. icons and `.desktop' files, nor man pages or translation files. Using this method to install jack_mixer is thus not recommended and mainly provided for testing prurposes.

1. Make sure you have Python 3, git, pip and the Python build package installed and your internet connection is online.
2. Run the following command to build a binary wheel:

python -m build -w

This will automatically download the required build tools, e.g. Cython, meson, ninja, the Python wheel package etc. (see the pyproject.toml file for details), build the software with meson and then package it into a wheel, which will be placed in the dist directory below the project's root directory.

The wheel can be installed with python -m pip install dist/jack_mixer-*.whl.