ref: 4c03d8d678c49d604ccc3f57f30ed25a7ba6d69e
dir: /INSTALL/
SoX Installation
----------------
SoX should compile and run on any POSIX compatible system (Linux, BSD,
Solaris, Xcode on Mac OS X, Cygwin on MS-Windows, etc.). For other
compilers/systems, it is often possible to manually construct a custom
`soxconfig.h' and `Makefile' for that system (the minimum requirements
are 32-bit CPU, 64-bit FPU, C89 compiler).
Note that the `play', `rec', and `soxi' programs are in fact just
copies-of or links-to (depending on OS) `sox'.
SoX optionally makes use of some external libraries to obtain support
for additional file formats and/or effects. Optional libraries should
be installed before compiling SoX. The current list of supported
libraries, where to get them (if not from your OS distribution), and
their licence types, is as follows:
OpencoreAMR-NB/WB http://sourceforge.net/projects/opencore-amr Apache
AMR-NB/WB http://www.penguin.cz/~utx/amr See library web page
AO http://xiph.org/ao GPL
FLAC http://flac.sourceforge.net BSD
LADSPA http://www.ladspa.org LGPL + plugins' licence
Lame MP3 encoder http://lame.sourceforge.net LGPL
Twolame MP2 enc. http://www.twolame.org LGPL
libltdl http://www.gnu.org/software/libtool LGPL
MAD MP3 decoder http://www.underbit.com/products/mad GPL
MP3 ID3 tags http://www.underbit.com/products/mad GPL
Magic http://www.darwinsys.com/file BSD
Ogg Vorbis http://www.vorbis.com BSD
Opus http://www.opus-codec.org/ BSD
PNG http://www.libpng.org/pub/png zlib (BSD-like)
Sndfile http://www.mega-nerd.com/libsndfile LGPL
WavPack http://www.wavpack.com BSD
Compiling and installing on a POSIX system
------------------------------------------
First install any optional libraries that you need for SoX. Some
libraries may require pkg-config to be installed to be properly
detected by SoX.
[Only if you're compiling the git sources, first make sure you have
the GNU autotools (automake >= 1.9, autoconf >= 2.62, autoconf-archive)
installed, then run
autoreconf -i
]
To compile and install SoX (executables, libraries, manual pages) with
a default configuration for your platform, run the following commands:
./configure
make -s
make install
There should be no errors and few, if any, warnings during the `make
-s' stage. Any warnings about pointer mismatch or conversion should
be treated with deep suspicion.
The `make install' command may require `root' priviliges; for example,
on some systems, the following modification to the command is needed:
sudo make install
To run a selection of tests on the installed sox executable:
make installcheck
Optionally, HTML & PDF versions of the manual pages can be built and
installed as follows:
make html
make install-html
make pdf
make install-pdf
Again, `root' priviliges may be needed at the install stages.
Custom build options on a POSIX system
--------------------------------------
Selection of optional libraries and of other build options can be made
by adding parameters to the `./configure' command line (above). Run
./configure --help
for a complete list of options.
Each optional file-format may be configured to be loaded statically
(the default) or dynamically. The dynamic option may be useful for
distribution packaging reasons -- for example, to keep separate `free'
and `non-free' software.
If you are building SoX for a `distribution' (i.e. the build will be
used by others), please use --with-distro to identify the distribution
as this information is useful in helping to diagnose SoX bug reports.
For example,
./configure --with-distro='Super Linux OS 6.1'
If any libraries are installed in a non-standard locations in your
system then you can use the CPPFLAGS and LDFLAGS variables to allow
configure to find them. For example:
./configure CPPFLAGS="-I/home/sox/include -I/usr/local/multimedia/include" LDFLAGS="-L/home/sox/lib -L/usr/local/multimedia/lib"
If you are compiling under cygwin and would like to create a static
sox.exe using mingw libraries then you can use the following:
./configure CC="gcc -mno-cygwin" --disable-shared
The next cygwin example is used to build the cygwin version of SoX that is
distributed by the project. It tells gcc to prefer static libraries
over dynamic ones and to use some static libraries compiled manually
and installed under /usr/local.
./configure LDFLAGS="-static -L/usr/local/lib" CPPFLAGS=-I/usr/local/include
You can run "cygcheck.exe src/sox.exe" after compiling to see which
dynamic DLL's will be required to be distributed with the cygwin
executable.
Alternatively, you can make use of the "cygbuild" script distributed
with SoX source that is used to automate all steps of building
a win32 package. "osxbuild" script is used to automate all steps
of building a MacOS X package.
Newer versions of SoX include support for loading libraries for
file formats at runtime. The main usage of this feature is to
allow shipping SoX without dependencies on external libraries
that are not globally used or have redistribution restrictions.
If you experience problems with this then you may wish to disable
this feature:
./configure --without-libltdl
Also, the default behavior even when libltdl is used is to link
all file format handlers into libsox as there is a performance
hit when dynamically loading external libraries. To force a format
handler to be built as a dynamically loaded module, pass "dyn" to
its --with-* option. For example, to build pulseaudio handler as
an external dynamic library:
./configure --with-pulseaudio=dyn
A subset of external libraries can be configured to be dlopen()'ed
at run time instead of being linked in. This will allow one to
distribute a binary with optional features that only require
a user to install the missing libraries into their system. This
can be enabled using:
--enable-dl-lame
--enable-dl-mad
--enable-dl-sndfile
--enable-dl-amrnb
--enable-dl-amrwb
Testing
-------
N.B.: If SoX is configured and compiled to load some file-formats
dynamically, then it will not be able to load them when running SoX
executables from within the source file directory until after SoX has
been installed (temporarily configuring with --without-libltdl removes
this restriction).
After successfully compiling SoX, try translating a sound file. You
should also playback the new file to make sure it sounds like the
original. You can either use an external program or SoX itself
if compiled with playback support.
To work with widest range of playback programs, you should chose a
format that is native to your OS; such as .wav for Windows or .aiff for
MacOS. In the following example, we'll use .xxx as the extension of
your preferred format.
cd src
./sox monkey.wav monkey.xxx
You may have to give the sample format and rate for the file. For example,
this command will make a sound file with a data rate of 12,500 samples
per second and the data formatted as 16-bit signed integers:
./sox monkey.wav -r 12500 -b 16 -e signed-integer monkey.xxx
If playback support was compiled in then it can be played like this:
./play monkey.xxx
or, equivalently:
./sox monkey.xxx -d
If monkey.xxx plays properly (it's a very short monkey screech),
congratulations! SoX works.
If you're adding new features to SoX or want to perform advance tests
on a new platform then you can use the scripts "tests.sh" and
"testall.sh" to stress SoX.