[linux-audio-dev] linux audio apps on OSX: successes and failures

[Derek Holzer]

Dear Developers,

I've just spent the last couple days trying to get some of my favorite Linux
audio apps running on OSX with various degrees of success or failure. I'm
posting this report in the hopes that some of you could give me pointers on
finishing the job, and possibly to start a dicussion of expanding some more
support to OSX. Thanks for getting us this far and please read on!

1) System:

* OSX Tiger 10.4 with all developers packages installed
* Fink was used for most dependencies

2) Apps which I used DMG packages for with no real problems:

* Ardour 0.9beta30
* JackOSX 0.71
* SooperLooper 1.0.7
* SuperCollider3 bin-20050916
* Pure Data 0.36test2-extended-RC0

3) Apps I compiled with different degrees of success:

* Jack Audio Connection Kit 0.100.0
* Jack-Rack 1.4.4
* JackEQ 0.4.0
* QJackctl 0.2.18
* Jamin 0.95.0
* Rezound 0.12.2beta
* Jack Timemachine 0.3.1
* MCP Plugins 0.3.0
* REV Plugins 0.3.1
* BLOP Plugins 0.2.8
* CAPS Plugins 0.2.3
* CMT Plugins 1.15
* SWH Plugins 0.4.14
* TAP Plugins 0.7.0

4) Results and Notes:

* Jack Audio Connection Kit 0.100.0
Apparently successful. Starts from the command line without problem, and is
installed in a different location than the JackOSX package so I don't beleive
there to be a conflict.


* Jack-Rack 1.4.4
Compiles without any real difficulty. However, when run it gives the following
error for each plugin installed in /usr/local/lib/ladspa:

plugin_mgr_get_object_file_plugins: error opening shared object file
'/usr/lib/ladspa/zm1_1428.so': dlopen(/usr/lib/ladspa/zm1_1428.so, 10): Symbol
not found: _libintl_dgettext
  Referenced from: /usr/local/lib/ladspa/zm1_1428.so
  Expected in: flat namespace

After which I get a GTK message stating that Jack-Rack could not find any LADSPA
plugins and I should check my path (which is correct, BTW). Ardour gives the
same error, so I assume it has something to do with my SWH compile.

* JackEQ 0.4.0
Compiles fine. Gives runtime error:

Fontconfig warning: line 251: invalid edit binding "same"
Fontconfig warning: line 263: invalid edit binding "same"
Registering as jackEQ
Bus error

and exits. Probably to do with SWH plugins.

* QJackctl 0.2.18
Compiles and runs fine. Only problem is with initializing the CoreAudio device.
My CoreAudio device has the identifier "-n Apple03DBDMAAudio:i2s-a:0", however
there is no way to get QJackctl to enter that string in the startup command.
Seems it can't handle CoreAudio/OpenFirmware(?) ID strings (QJackctl
identitifes my card as "128" in the select menu). If Jackd or JackOSX are
already running, QJackctl recognizes them and I can use the Connections menu.
MIDI support is not there, of course, due to lack of ALSA.

* Jamin 0.95.0
Compiles and runs fine, after some work to get it to recognize the LADSPA_PATH.
Exits with the same "Bus error" message on startup, possibly due to SWH Plugins
problem.

* Rezound 0.12.2beta
I've heard people using this on OSX, and I've even seen a commercial package for
OSX using it, but I'll be damned if I can get it to compile. Here's as far as I
got:

 g++ -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I. -I../../../config -I../../../src/misc
-I../../../src/misc/missing/generated -I../../../src/PoolFile -g -Wall
-Wno-unused-function -Wno-unused-variable -Wno-unused -MT CNestedDataFile.lo
-MD -MP -MF .deps/CNestedDataFile.Tpo -c CNestedDataFile.cpp -o
CNestedDataFile.o
CNestedDataFile.cpp:21:2: warning: #warning parseFile doesnt need to set the
filename, only the constructor and setFilename should do that
CNestedDataFile.cpp:22:2: warning: #warning see about retaining the order that
things were parsed in the file
In file included from ../../../config/common.h:72,
                 from CNestedDataFile.h:24,
                 from CNestedDataFile.cpp:36:
./../../config/platform/platform.h:10:3: warning: #warning no platform
determined!
In file included from CNestedDataFile.cpp:45:
./../../src/misc/CPath.h:302:5: error: #error CPath::which needs to be
implemented on this platform
make[3]: *** [CNestedDataFile.lo] Error 1
make[2]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make: *** [all-recursive] Error 1

[More spew available on request]. Also cannot get ./configure to recognize
fftw.h and the other FFTW headers, no matter how many PATH combinations I try.

* Jack Timemachine 0.3.1
Compiles and starts without problem. A half an hour ago I was getting the
following: "Cannot open file for writing: Bad file descriptor", but just now
when I tried again, apparently it wrote a proper w64 file. Who knew! ;-)

* MCP Plugins 0.3.0
These lack a proper ./configure file, and I did not edit the Makefile at all.
Compile ends with:

g++ -shared  mvclpf24.o mvclpf24_if.o exp2ap.o -o mvclpf24.so
powerpc-apple-darwin8-g++-4.0.0: unrecognized option '-shared'
/usr/bin/ld: Undefined symbols:
_main
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make: *** [mvclpf24.so] Error 1

* REV Plugins 0.3.1
Same as MCP plugs. No ./configure and ends with:

g++ -shared greverb.o g2reverb.o g2reverb_if.o exp2ap.o -o g2reverb.so
powerpc-apple-darwin8-g++-4.0.0: unrecognized option '-shared'
/usr/bin/ld: Undefined symbols:
_main
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make: *** [g2reverb.so] Error 1

* BLOP Plugins 0.2.8

Compile ends with:

gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I. -I..  -I/usr/local/include -Iinclude -I.
-DLOCALEDIR=\"/usr/local/share/locale\"   -pipe -Wall -O3 -Wno-unused
-DNO_DEBUG -DPIC -fPIC             -ffast-math -fomit-frame-pointer
-funroll-loops -nostartfiles -shared -lc -o adsr_1653.so  adsr_1653.so.o  
powerpc-apple-darwin8-gcc-4.0.0: unrecognized option '-shared'
/usr/bin/ld: Undefined symbols:
_libintl_bindtextdomain
_libintl_gettext
_libintl_textdomain
dyld_stub_binding_helper
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make[3]: *** [adsr_1653.so] Error 1
make[2]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make: *** [all] Error 2

This unrecognized option '-shared' is becoming a theme, isn't it? I also wonder
if there is a problem with my Fink-installed gettext, as that is the error
which the SWH plugins give when a client tries to use them. 

* CAPS Plugins 0.2.3
No ./configure at all, I had to symlink a malloc.h to a place where it could
find it, and it all ends as such:

g++ -O6 -ffast-math -funroll-loops -Wall  -I/usr/local/include -c Amp.cc
Amp.cc:169: error: explicit specialization of 'void Descriptor<AmpIII>::setup()'
must be introduced by 'template <>'
Amp.cc:169: error: template-id 'setup<>' for 'void Descriptor<AmpIII>::setup()'
does not match any template declaration
Amp.cc:169: error: invalid function declaration
Amp.cc:303: error: explicit specialization of 'void Descriptor<AmpIV>::setup()'
must be introduced by 'template <>'
Amp.cc:303: error: template-id 'setup<>' for 'void Descriptor<AmpIV>::setup()'
does not match any template declaration
Amp.cc:303: error: invalid function declaration
make: *** [Amp.o] Error 1

* CMT Plugins 1.15
No ./configure at all. Issuing a "make" in the src directory yields:
g++ -I/usr/local/include/ -Wall -Werror -O3 -fPIC   -c -o analogue.o
analogue.cpp
cc1plus: warnings being treated as errors
analogue.cpp: In static member function 'static void Analogue::run(void*, long
unsigned int)':
analogue.cpp:259: warning: 'a' may be used uninitialized in this function
analogue.cpp:259: warning: 'b' may be used uninitialized in this function
analogue.cpp:259: warning: 'c' may be used uninitialized in this function
make: *** [analogue.o] Error 1

* SWH Plugins 0.4.14
Compiled and installed to /usr/local/lib/ladspa without a hitch, but as you can
see they have caused problems for all the LADSPA hosts so far with the
following:

plugin_mgr_get_object_file_plugins: error opening shared object file
'/usr/lib/ladspa/zm1_1428.so': dlopen(/usr/lib/ladspa/zm1_1428.so, 10): Symbol
not found: _libintl_dgettext
  Referenced from: /usr/local/lib/ladspa/zm1_1428.so
  Expected in: flat namespace

or simply a quieter "Bus error". Too bad, it was looking good so far...

Incidentally, I also used Taybin's swh-plugins and tap-plugins DMG files and
they gave me the same results. So if these DMG packages are working for someone
else, then I know it's something specific to my system here (gettext perhaps?)

* TAP Plugins 0.7.0
No ./configure. Compile ends with:
lsgcc -I. -O3 -Wall -fomit-frame-pointer -fstrength-reduce -funroll-loops
-ffast-math -c -fPIC -DPIC tap_autopan.c -o tap_autopan.o
gcc -nostartfiles -shared -Wl,-Bsymbolic -lc -lm -lrt -o tap_autopan.so
tap_autopan.o
powerpc-apple-darwin8-gcc-4.0.0: unrecognized option '-shared'
/usr/bin/ld: unknown flag: -Bsymbolic
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make: *** [tap_autopan.so] Error 1

5) Conclusion

While writing this report I tried Taybin's pair of LADSPA DMG packages, hoping
for the best, but getting the same results. So I'm hoping I've provided enough
info for some of you to point me in the right direction.

I'd be happy to run a "gdb" on anything you all would like to hear more about,
and I'd love to hear some feedback about how to get through all this.
Particularly the Rezound and SWH problems, as those are the two biggest
sticking points.

thx + best wishes,
derek
  
http://umatic.nl