Here are (now improved) quick instructions to create a working build sandbox for PulseAudio development on Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick on an i386 platform. I highly recommend reading all this post completely before starting this process.
Here are the steps to make PulseAudio that builds and works for Ubuntu:
- Install or update to Maverick and accept defaults, this process will probably work fine with other Ubuntu versions, so if you are not on Maverick, give it a try.
- Update all packages with Update Manager
- Install dpkg-dev -> sudo apt-get install dpkg-dev
If you are using source from git:
- Install git if you haven’t already -> sudo apt-get install git
- From your home directory, get the latest PulseAudio source -> git clone git://git.0pointer.de/pulseaudio.git
- Git will create the PulseAudio repository in a directory called pulseaudio, when the clone has completed, change to that directory -> cd ~/pulseaudio
If you are using Ubuntu maverick source:
- Install the source -> apt-get source pulseaudio
Configure and build the source:
- Install the prereq packages -> sudo apt-get build-dep pulseaudio
- To check the environment and set up the basics, run the bootstrap script -> ./bootstrap.sh
- Next, run configure -> ./configure
- Run make to build the executables
Note: the executables will be in the src directory. Change to that directory and run specifying that path so that you will not run the system programs. For example, to run pulseaudio with verbose log messages, cd to src and run -> ./pulseaudio -n -F ./default.pa -p ./.libs -vvvv
There are some very helpful hints at: http://colin.guthr.ie/2010/09/compiling-and-running-pulseaudio-from-git/ The steps on this page are slightly different for Ubuntu, but worth reading to better understand the process. Also, this page does a really nice job of explaining how to run pulseaudio for test/debug.