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Building SuperCollider on Linux

Build requirements

These are strict requirements for scsynth and supernova:

  • A C++ compiler with C++17 support.
  • cmake >= 3.12: Cross-platform build system.
  • libsndfile >= 1.0: Soundfile I/O.
  • libjack: Development headers for the JACK Audio Connection Kit.
  • fftw >= 3.0: FFT library.

These packages are required by default for scsynth and supernova, but the components that require them can be disabled with flags:

  • libxt: X toolkit intrinsics, required for UGens such as MouseX. To build the servers without X, use the NO_X11=ON CMake flag.
  • libavahi-client: For zero-configuration networking. To build the servers without Avahi, use the NO_AVAHI=ON CMake flag.

Recommended packages

For sclang and scide:

  • Qt >= 6.2 with QtWebEngine and QtWebSockets: Cross-platform GUI library, required for the IDE and for sclang's Qt GUI kit.
  • git: Required for sclang's Quarks system.
  • ALSA: Linux sound library, required for sclang MIDI support.
  • libudev: Device manager library, required for HID support.
  • Linux kernel >= 2.6: Required for LID support.
  • libreadline >= 5: Required for sclang's CLI interface.
  • ncurses: Required for sclang's CLI interface.

Installing requirements on Debian

There are dedicated READMEs in this repository for building on particular embedded Linux platforms:

  • Raspberry Pi: README_RASPBERRY_PI.md
  • BeagleBone Black: README_BEAGLEBONE_BLACK.md
  • Bela: README_BELA.md

On Debian-like systems, the following command installs the minimal recommended dependencies for compiling scsynth and supernova:

sudo apt-get install build-essential cmake libjack-jackd2-dev libsndfile1-dev libfftw3-dev libxt-dev libavahi-client-dev

If you need to use JACK1 replace libjack-jackd2-dev by libjack-dev.

The following command installs all the recommended dependencies for sclang except for Qt:

sudo apt-get install git libasound2-dev libicu-dev libreadline6-dev libudev-dev pkg-config libncurses5-dev

Installing requirements on Fedora

The following commands should install all the recommended SuperCollider dependencies on Fedora, except for Qt:

sudo dnf groupinstall "Development Tools"
sudo dnf install cmake libsndfile-devel wayland-devel xorg-x11-server-Xwayland-devel pipewire-devel pipewire-jack-audio-connection-kit-devel systemd-devel fftw-devel alsa-lib-devel libatomic
sudo dnf install emacs # if building with the sc-el backend (default)

Installing Qt

Qt 6.2 or later is required to be able to run the SuperCollider IDE and sclang's Qt GUI system.

Installing Qt on recent Debian-like operating systems

Try this command to query the Qt6 version available to you:

apt-cache policy qt6-base-dev

If this displays version 6.2 or later, you can install Qt6 using apt. Please note that this list of packages might not be complete, as it hasn't been revised for Qt6.

sudo apt-get install qt6-base-dev qt6-base-dev-tools qt6-tools-dev qt6-tools-dev-tools libqt6websockets6-dev libqt6webenginecore6 qt6-webengine-dev qt6-webengine-dev-tools libqt6svgwidgets6

If you are on Ubuntu, check the sections below. If these instructions don't work, you will have to use the official Qt installer.

Installing Qt on Ubuntu 22.04, 24.04

On 22.04 and 24.04 Qt6 is available in the system's package manager. The following should install the correct packages:

sudo apt-get install qt6-base-dev qt6-base-dev-tools qt6-tools-dev qt6-tools-dev-tools qt6-declarative-dev libqt6gui6 libqt6printsupport6 libqt6svgwidgets6 libqt6websockets6-dev libqt6webenginecore6 libqt6webenginecore6-bin qt6-webengine-dev qt6-webengine-dev-tools libqt6core5compat6-dev libqt6webchannel6-dev libqt6opengl6-dev libqt6svg6-dev linguist-qt6 qt6-l10n-tools  libglx-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libvulkan-dev libxkbcommon-dev libxcb-xkb-dev

Installing Qt on Fedora

Please note, this list has not been tested after upgrading to Qt6. Additional packages may be needed.

sudo dnf install qt6-qtbase-devel qt6-qtsvg-devel qt6-qtwebengine-devel qt6-linguist qt6-qtwebsockets-devel

Installing Qt using the official installer

Worst case scenario, you can grab Qt off the Qt official website. It's best to get the latest version. Click "Download," select the open source license, and download the Qt installer. The Qt installer has a step that prompts for you to log in to a Qt Account, but you don't actually need to authenticate and you can safely click "Skip" at that step.

At the "Select Components" step, pop open Qt, select the latest version, and check the "Desktop" option. If you are building the IDE, also select "QWebEngine."

Unfortunately, the Qt installer does not allow you to deselect the multi-gigabyte QtCreator download.

Using Clang

SuperCollider can be compiled with Clang. By default on Linux clang will use libstdc++ instead of libc++ (-DSC_CLANG_USES_LIBSTDCPP=ON). You can set this option to off to use libc++ instead; this will however likely cause issues when linking with Qt6.

Building

Step 1: Obtain the source code

SuperCollider is hosted on Github: https://github.com/SuperCollider/SuperCollider

Obtaining the SuperCollider source code can be done either by downloading a release tarball, or by cloning the repository.

SuperCollider releases are available to download here: https://github.com/supercollider/supercollider/releases

Cloning the repository can be done with the following command:

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/SuperCollider/SuperCollider.git

The --recurse-submodules option will clone the repository's submodules which are needed to build SuperCollider. The submodules can also be obtained by navigating to the root of your locally cloned SuperCollider repository and running the following command:

git submodule update --init --recursive

Step 2: Make a build directory

First, cd into the root of the SuperCollider source directory (where this file resides).

Create a build directory and cd into it:

mkdir build
cd build

You can actually name this whatever you want, allowing you to have multiple independent build directories. If your SuperCollider source is also a git repository, the .gitignore file is configured to ignore files of the form build*.

Step 3: Set CMake flags

Depending on what SuperCollider components you wish to install, you can set CMake flags. You can set CMake flags on the command line using cmake -DKEY=value ... You can also use cmake frontends like ccmake or cmake-gui, or simply edit the CMakeCache.txt file. CMake flags are persistent and you only need to run these commands once each.

We will cover a few important settings. There are others, which you can view with cmake -LH ... We will document more of them in this README file soon.

Nonstandard Qt locations

If you are installing sclang with GUI features and the IDE, and you installed Qt using the official Qt installer, you will need to tell SuperCollider where Qt is. To do so:

cmake -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=/path/to/qt6 ..

The location of /path/to/qt6 will depend on how you installed Qt:

  • If you downloaded Qt from the Qt website, the path is two directories down from the top-level unpacked Qt directory, in a folder called gcc: Qt/5.11.0/gcc_64/ (64-bit Linux) or Qt/5.11.0/gcc/ (32-bit). By default, the Qt installer places Qt/ in your home directory.

If you want to build without Qt entirely, run

cmake -DSC_QT=OFF ..

Compiler optimizations

If you're building SC for production use and/or don't plan on using a debugger, make sure to build in release mode:

cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ..

This sets the compiler to the best optimization settings. Switch back to the defaults using cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo ...

If you're compiling SC only for use on your own machine (that is, you aren't cross-compiling or packaging SC for distribution), it is recommended to turn on the NATIVE flag to enable CPU-specific optimizations:

cmake -DNATIVE=ON ..

Install location

By default, SuperCollider installs in /usr/local, a system-wide install. Maybe you can't or don't want to use superuser privileges, or just want to install for a single user. To do so, set CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX to the desired installation directory. One good place to put it would be $HOME/usr/local:

cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=~/usr/local ..

Make sure ~/usr/local/bin is in your PATH if you do this. You can do that by adding a line such as PATH=$PATH:$HOME/usr/local/bin to ~/.profile.

Speeding up repeated builds

If you are developing SC or you're constantly pulling in the latest changes, rebuilding SC repeatedly can be a drag. Installing ccache can speed up re-compilation. Here is how to configure cmake to use it:

cmake -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=/usr/lib/ccache/g++ -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=/usr/lib/ccache/gcc ..

This assumes your ccache executables are installed into /usr/lib/ccache - you may need to change the path to reflect your installation.

Library suffix

In some situations, it is preferable to install libraries and plugins not in the lib directory but in a suffixed one, e.g. lib64. In such a case you can set the cmake variable LIB_SUFFIX. For example if you wish to install into lib64:

cmake -DLIB_SUFFIX=64 ..

Step 4: Build

If CMake ran successfully without errors, you are ready to move on to building. You can freely alternate between building and setting CMake flags.

After setting your CMake flags, just run

make

The -j option allows multiple jobs to be run simultaneously, which can improve compile times on machines with multiple cores. The optimal -j setting varies between machines, but a good rule of thumb is the number of cores plus one. For example, on a 4-core system, try make -j5.

And to install, run

make install

You will need to use sudo make install if you are doing a system-wide installation, which is the default.

After installing for the first time, please run

sudo ldconfig

To uninstall:

make uninstall

(or sudo make uninstall).

Building a Debian package

The most up-to-date Debian packaging rules are maintained by the Debian Multimedia team. Repository (with debian/ folder):

https://salsa.debian.org/multimedia-team/supercollider

Running scsynth or supernova (standalone)

Run scsynth --help or supernova --help to get an option summary. Don't forget to start jackd before starting the server. If you want to add directories to supercollider's search path or assign default jack ports, set up your environment as described below.

You can specify the number of jack input/output channels created with the options -i and -o, respectively.

the -H option can be used to specify a jack server to connect to and to set the jack client identifier. The format is either

<SERVER-NAME>:<CLIENT-NAME>

or just

<CLIENT-NAME>

when connecting to the default server.

Running sclang

Supercollider comes with its own powerful IDE. Run it with:

$> scide

Alternatively you can use sclang in combination with your preferred text editor out of emacs/vim/gedit. See the README.md files in editors/* for installation and usage. Another alternative is to simply run the sclang executable which will provide a readline-based interface.

sclang executes the startup file ~/.config/SuperCollider/startup.scd after class library initialization. This file can contain statements to set up your supercollider environment, like setting default variables. An example can be found in linux/examples/sclang.sc.

You have to have a directory ~/.local/share/SuperCollider. This is where a synthdefs directory is automatically created. It is also the place to put Extensions to the class library, in a folder called Extensions.

The runtime directory is either the current working directory or the path specified with the -d option.

Headless operation

Even though the standard distribution of SuperCollider is built with the Qt framework, sclang can still be run in terminal without the X server. In order to do that, the QT_QPA_PLATFORM environment variable needs to be set to offscreen:

$> export QT_QPA_PLATFORM=offscreen
$> sclang

Environment

The jack audio driver interface is configured based on various environment variables:

  • SC_JACK_DEFAULT_INPUTS comma-separated list of jack ports that the server's inputs should connect by default

    $> export SC_JACK_DEFAULT_INPUTS="system:capture_1,system:capture_2"

    in order to connect the first ports of one jack client, it is possible to specify only the client name

    $> export SC_JACK_DEFAULT_INPUTS="system"

  • SC_JACK_DEFAULT_OUTPUTS comma-separated list of jack ports that the server's outputs should be connected to by default.

    $> export SC_JACK_DEFAULT_OUTPUTS="system:playback_1,system:playback_2"

    In order to connect the first ports of one jack client, it is possible to specify only the client name

    $> export SC_JACK_DEFAULT_OUTPUTS="system"

Two additional environment variables substitute directories for the default search path for plugins and synth definitions, respectively. Directory names are separated by ':' as in the Unix PATH variable:

  • SC_PLUGIN_PATH, SC_SYNTHDEF_PATH

    $> export SC_SYNTHDEF_PATH="./synthdefs:/home/sk/SuperCollider/synthdefs"

Contributors to this document

  • stefan kersten
  • andi pieper
  • maurizio umberto puxeddu
  • rohan drape
  • mario lang
  • john yates
  • nescivi (marije baalman)
  • dan stowell
  • tim blechmann