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https://github.com/bgribble/mfp

Music For Programmers, a graphical patching language
https://github.com/bgribble/mfp

jack midi music puredata python

Last synced: about 2 months ago
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Music For Programmers, a graphical patching language

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README 

        
BUILDING AND INSTALLING MFP

===================================



Post version 0.07, 2024-01-15



TL;DR

---------------------



   $ ./waf configure --python=python3 --virtualenv --prefix ~/mfpvirt build install install_deps

     [...]

   $ ~/mfpvirt/bin/mfp -v



THINGS TO KNOW

---------------------



OS platform: I have only tested MFP on 32-bit (raspi) and 64-bit

Linux.



python: MFP requires Python 3.x at this time.



waf: MFP uses 'waf', which you can think of as a replacement for

autotools and make.  You do not need to install waf; the correct

version is supplied in the MFP source tree.  That's the way waf

is designed to work  More information can be found at

https://code.google.com/p/waf/.  MFP's "Makefile" or

"configure.in" equivalent is the file "wscript", which is a plain

Python file.  The entry points used by waf are the functions

"configure" and "build", defined near the bottom of the file.



venv: Python dependencies for MFP can either be installed globally

with your installed "pip" or into a virtual environment created

at install time. I recommend using the virtual environment. This

requires the Python "venv" module, which is part of the standard

Python library but Debian and others have it packaged separately.

If you see a configure error about this you may need to install

python3-venv or similar. Configure to use venv with the "--virtualenv"

arg to "waf configure"



setuptools: The build process depends on Python setuptools.  If

you have virtualenv installed, you have setuptools already, but

if you aren't using virtualenv you may need to install setuptools

separately.  It's packaged as "python-setuptools" on Debian and

Ubuntu.



pip: Pip is still the default package installer for Python. You

will need it installed to build the "wheel" packages.



gcc: The C components of mfp (mfpdsp, pluginfo, and testext) are

straightforward C but include some c99-isms, mainly due to LV2.  I

have been using versions from gcc-4.8.3 to 9.3.0 with no trouble.



CONFIGURING

-----------------------



The basic form:



    $ ./waf configure [options]



A full list of options is shown by ./waf --help, under

"Configuration options". Most of these are waf builtin options. The custom

options for MFP are:



| Option | Purpose |

|--------|---------|

| `--virtualenv` | Build in a virtualenv (default: false) |

| `--with-clutter` | Enable Clutter backend (default: don't build) |

| `--without-imgui` | Disable Dear ImGUI backend (default: build) |



LIBRARIES

-----------------------



The "mfpdsp" C library/program needs a few C libraries with their

development headers and pkg-config files installed:



 * ladspa.h       (LADSPA plugins)

 * glib-2.0       (GLib/GObject)

 * json-glib-2.0  (JSON serializing/deserializing)

 * serd-0         (LV2 TTL parsing)

 * jack           (duh)

 * liblo          (OSC library, needed by pyliblo)

 * lv2 headers    (LV2 load/save)

 * libfaust       ([faust~] for embedded Faust DSP)

 * llvm           (LLVM, for Faust live compilation and linking)

 * libpolly       (LLVM helper library needed for Faust+LLVM)



You'll get errors in the "./waf configure" process if these aren't installed.



Python runtime dependencies will be installed automatically.



Note that the Python language bindings for Gtk+/GLib and Clutter libraries

CANNOT be automatically installed by this build process.  You need to

install your OS package manager's package for the "GIR" (GObject

Introspection Repository) data for Clutter, Glib, Gtk+, Gdk,

GtkClutter, and Pango, and the Python infrastructure to use that data.

In Debian, these are packaged as:



    gir1.2-clutter-1.0

    gir1.2-gtkclutter-1.0

    gir1.2-pango-1.0

    gir1.2-glib-2.0

    gir1.2-gtk-3.0

    python-gi



They are only needed if you are building the Clutter UI.



BUILDING

-----------------------



    $ ./waf build



This will build the project into ./wafbuild (or other directory as

specified to "configure").  There may be some temporary stuff placed

into ./build/ and ./dist/ by setuptools, so I wouldn't use those as

names for the waf build directory.



INSTALLING

--------------------------



    $ ./waf install



The installation root defaults to /usr/local and can be modified

by passing in the --prefix argument to "./waf configure". You can use a

shared area like /opt/ or /usr/local/ or specify a MFP-specific dir

such as /opt/mfp or ~/mfp/. There will be a couple of things in $prefix/bin,

one shared library in $prefix/lib, and then a bunch of stuff in

$prefix/share/mfp/.



You don't have to add anything to any paths to launch MFP;

$prefix/bin/mfp is a wrapper which does that for you. Just run it

and you should be good to go.



Note that once you have installed MFP to a $prefix, there's some

stuff hardcoded into the launcher so you can't just move the

whole directory to another location. You will need to install

again to the new location.



DESKTOP FILE

--------------------------



The template desktop file `mfp.desktop` will be populated with

paths and installed to ${PREFIX}/share/mfp/com.billgribble.mfp.desktop. You will

need to copy it to wherever such things go on your system.



The icon path is what I needed to get icons working on my Gnome

system. You may need to change it. If you need to do something

manual, the actual icon image is the one in mfp.svg. I can't

express how crabby I am about how messed up icons are on the

Linux desktop.



For what it's worth, on my system the desktop file should be

~/.local/share/applications/com.billgribble.mfp.desktop



RUNNING TESTS

--------------------------



There are some tests, though not as many as I would like.  What's

there basically comes in two flavors, all of which can be run

with various incantations of the `nosetests` test runner:



 * Python test cases in mfp/test: run with plain `nosetests -v mfp/test/`



 * C test cases in mfpdsp/test_*: run with the `testext` plugin

   to nosetests, `nosetests -v --with-testext --exe wafbuild/libmfpdsp.so`



Note on nosetests: I started using it because, 12+ years ago, it

was the best test runner. Now other tools like pytest have won

more mindshare. I spent some effort on the plugins to run C tests

for mfpdsp so I am sticking with nosetests.



HOWEVER, the original nosetests is abandoned and doesn't work

with current Python versions, and the "new" version of nosetests

(nose2) changed the way plugins worked, and doesn't support the

--exe option needed to point nose to the libmfpdsp.so file. So I

switched over to "pynose", which is a fork of the original

nosetests, just updated to work with contemporary Python. It gets

installed by install_deps.