Building Csound

Csound has become a complex project and can involve many dependencies. Unless you are a Csound developer or need to develop Csound plugins, you should try to use one of the precompiled distributions from http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/csound. However, building from source is probably the best option on GNU/Linux.

This section focuses on the main Csound 5 build system, which uses SCons, a Python program that replaces make for cross-platform configuration and building.

When building Csound from source instead of using a precompiled package, you first need to obtain the sources for a release of Csound at http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/csound. The source packages have either a zip or tar.gz extension.

The latest (possibly unstable) Csound source code is also available through the Concurrent Versions System (CVS). It's likely (if you're running Mac OS X or Linux) that you already have CVS installed on your machine. If not, it can be downloaded from (http://www.cvshome.org). There are many graphical front ends for cvs, but you can easily get the sources using the command line version.

The Csound CVS front page is located at: http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=81968. Information about accessing the CVS repository may be found in the SourceForge document http://sourceforge.net/docs/E04/. To download Csound sources using CVS, run the following commands (from a terminal or DOS shell):

    cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@csound.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/csound login

    cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@csound.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/csound co -P csound5

To update the Csound5 sources you already have in your csound5 directory, change to that directory, and then type:

    cvs -z3 update -d

To update only a single file, change to the sources directory, and then type:

    cvs -z3 update filename

Basic requirements to build Csound 5 on any platform

These are the minimum requirements for a build, but csound has many optional components which enhance functionality and add opcodes which may require additional libraries.

Optional configurations (ALL platforms)

In most cases it is best to install the most recent stable versions of the optional libraries.

Windows

The following is needed to build on Windows (more complete build instructions for Windows may be found in the csound-build.tex document (csound-build.pdf)):

Optional configurations for Windows include the following:

Linux

Optional configurations for Linux include the following:

Mac OS X

Optional configurations for Mac OS X include the following:

Building Csound 5 with SCons

When you have all the necessary packages and their sources (or -dev packages) to support your particular requirements on your hardware platform, execute "scons -h" to discover the current configuration options.

Building is made considerably easier if, when installing, the downloaded headers and libraries are installed in their default locations. To modify the default build, in particular to handle non-standard options for third-party dependencies, such as where headers and libraries are to be found:

If you do modify this file, you should make it read-only (or otherwise protect it) so that CVS will not overwrite it when you next update the sourcefiles. Avoid modifying the SConstruct file.

Execute scons with the optional custom variables you desire. For example:

scons buildOSC=1 buildCsound5GUI=1 buildPythonOpcodes=1 useOSC=1 buildLoris=0
[Note] Note

It is important that you set the environment variable OPCODEDIR to the directory where plugin libraries are installed; in the case of a double precision build, OPCODEDIR64 should be set instead. Installers usually take care of this, but it is necessary when building from source so Csound can find its plugin libraries.

Current build options

Table 4. Current SCons Build Options

Custom Variable Effect if set to 1
buildCsoundVST Build CsoundVST. Needs CsoundAC, FLTK, boost, Python, SWIG.
buildCsoundAC Build CsoundAC. Needs FLTK, boost, Python, SWIG.
buildCsound5GUI Build FLTK GUI frontend. Requires FLTK 1.1.7 or later.
buildCSEditor Build the Csound syntax highlighting text editor. Requires FLTK headers and libs.
buildDSSI Build DSSI/LADSPA host opcodes.
buildImageOpcodes Build image opcodes. 1 by default. Set to 0 to avoid.
buildInterfaces Build interface library for Python, JAVA, Lua, C++, and other languages.
buildJavaWrapper Build Java wrapper for the interface library.
buildLoris Build the Loris Python extension and opcodes.
buildNewParser Enable building new parser. Requires Flex/Bison.
buildOSXGUI Build the basic GUI frontend. OSX only.
buildPDClass Build csoundapi~ PD class. Needs m_pd.h in the standard places.
buildPythonOpcodes Build Python opcodes
buildRelease Build for release. Implies noDebug.
buildSDFT Build SDFT code. 1 by default. Set to 0 to avoid.
buildTclcsound Build Tclcsound frontend (cstclsh, cswish and tclcsound dynamic module). Requires Tcl/Tk headers and libs.
buildUtilities Build stand-alone executables for utilities that can also be used with -U.
buildVirtual Build Virtual MIDI keyboard. Requires FLTK 1.1.7 or later headers and libs.
buildvst4cs Build vst4cs plugins. Requires Steinberg VST headers.
buildWinsound Build Winsound frontend. Requires FLTK headers and libs.
dynamicCsoundLibrary Build dynamic Csound library instead of libcsound.a.
gcc3opt Enable gcc 3.3.x or later optimizations for the specified CPU architecture (e.g. pentium3); implies noDebug.
gcc4opt Enable gcc 4.0 or later optimizations for the specified CPU architecture (e.g. pentium3); implies noDebug.
generateTags Generate TAGS.
generatePdf Generate PDF documentation.
install Enables the Install targets.
Lib64 Build for lib64 rather than lib.
noDebug Build without debugging information.
noFLTKThreads Disable use of a separate thread for FLTK widgets.
useAltivec On OSX use the gcc AltiVec optmisation flags.
useALSA ALSA for real-time audio and MIDI input and output.
useCoreAudio use CoreAudio for real-time audio input and output.
useDouble Use double-precision floating point for audio samples.
useFLTK Use FLTK for graphs and widget opcodes.
useGettext Use the GNU internationalisation/localisation scheme
useGprof Build with profiling information (-pg).
usePortAudio Use PortAudio for real-time audio input and output.
usePortMIDI Build PortMidi plugin for real time MIDI input and output.
useJack Used if you compiled PortAudio to use Jack; also builds Jack plugin.
useLrint Use lrint() and lrintf() for converting floating point values to integers.
useOSC For OSC support.
useUDP For UDP support. 1 by default. Set to 0 to avoid.
withICL Build with the Intel C++ Compiler (also requires Microsoft Visual C++), Set to 0 to build with MinGW. Windows only.
withMSVC Build with Microsoft Visual C++, or set to 0 to build with MinGW. Windows only.
Word64 Build for 64bit computer.
pythonVersion Set to the Python version to be used.