Carla/INSTALL.md

INSTALL for Carla

NOTE: when using MSYS2 on Windows, an additional step is necessary in order to solve an issue with symbolic links to some dependency folders before build:

$ make msys2fix

To install Carla, simply run as usual:

$ make
$ [sudo] make install

You can run it without installing, by using instead:

$ make
$ ./source/frontend/carla

Packagers can make use of the PREFIX and DESTDIR variable during install, like this:

$ make install PREFIX=/usr DESTDIR=./test-dir

BUILD DEPENDENCIES

There are no required build dependencies. The default build is probably not what you want though.

If you want the frontend (which is likely), you will need PyQt5 (python3 version).

You likely will also want:

• libmagic/file (for auto-detection of binary types, needed for plugin-bridges)
• liblo (for OSC support, also a requirement for DSSI UIs)

Optional for extra Linux-only engine features:

• ALSA
• PulseAudio
• X11 (LV2/VST X11 UI support)

Optional for extended LV2 UIs support: (Linux only)

• Gtk2
• Gtk3
• Qt4
• Qt5

Optional for Linux VST3 support:

• freetype2
• Xcursor
• Xext

Optional for extra samplers support:

• FluidSynth (SF2/3)

Optional for extra LADSPA plugin information:

• python3-rdflib

You can use:

$ make features

To find out which dependencies are missing.

Under Debian based systems, you can use this command to install everything:

sudo apt install python3-pyqt5.qtsvg python3-rdflib pyqt5-dev-tools \
  libmagic-dev liblo-dev libasound2-dev libpulse-dev libx11-dev libxcursor-dev libxext-dev \
  libgtk2.0-dev libgtk-3-dev libqt4-dev qtbase5-dev libfluidsynth-dev

Under Fedora, you can use the following command instead:

sudo dnf install python3-qt5-devel python3-rdflib \
  file-devel liblo-devel alsa-lib-devel pulseaudio-libs-devel libX11-devel
  gtk2-devel gtk3-devel qt4-devel qt5-devel fluidsynth-devel libsndfile-devel

BUILD BRIDGES (Experimental)

Carla can make use of plugin bridges to load additional plugin types.

32bit plugins on 64bit systems

Simply run make posix32 after a regular Carla build, and install or run Carla locally.
This feature requires a compiler capable of building 32bit binaries.

JACK Applications inside Carla

This is built by default on Linux systems.
Requires LD_PRELOAD support by the OS and the GCC compiler.
Does not work with clang. (if you discover why, please let me know!)

Windows plugins (via Wine)

Requires a mingw compiler, and winegcc.

First, we build the Windows bridges using mingw, like this: (adjust as needed)

make win32 CC=i686-w64-mingw32-gcc CXX=i686-w64-mingw32-g++
make win64 CC=x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc CXX=x86_64-w64-mingw32-g++

To finalize, we build the wine<->native bridges using winegcc:

make wine32
make wine64

Then install or run Carla locally as usual.
Don't forget to enable experimental options and plugin bridges in Carla settings to actually be able to use them.