libpd

Pure Data as an embeddable audio synthesis library

Copyright (c) Peter Brinkmann & the libpd team 2010-2016

Documentation

See our website and book at http://libpd.cc

For documentation of libpd, see the wiki: https://github.com/libpd/libpd/wiki

If you are using Processing, iOS, or Android, see our companion repositories:

• puredatap5
• pd-for-ios
• pd-for-android

Getting libpd

The preferred method to download libpd is to use git.

Do not download libpd as a zip or tar.gz file from GitHub.

The "Download zip" button may look like a good idea, but currently Github does not include submodule files when compiling zip files. This means the zip file is missing the main pd source files and you will not be able to build libpd, with errors such as: No rule to make target pure-data/src/d_arithmetic.o or No such file or directory: pure-data/extra/bonk~/bonk~.c.

To download libpd & checkout the pure-data submodule do the following:

git clone https://github.com/libpd/libpd.git
cd libpd
git submodule init
git submodule update

You should now have a libpd directory and the libpd/pure-data should contain the pd sources. If not, make sure you ran the git submodule commands in the libpd folder itself.

For most uses, it is recommended to checkout the latest stable release version via a git tag. For example, to switch to libpd version 0.8.3 after cloning:

git checkout 0.8.3

The master branch contains the latest libpd development and can be considered generally stable. However, we make no guarantees. :)

Repository Layout

pure-data

The folder containing the sources of Pd Vanilla and standard externals. This is a git submodule of Miller Puckette's official Pd git repository:

git://git.code.sf.net/p/pure-data/pure-data

libpd_wrapper

This folder contains the source files that make up the core of libpd.

Android.mk, Makefile, libpd.xcodeproj, libpd_csharp.sln

Build support for various platforms. Feel free to improve the build system in any way you see fit.

Currently the main Makefile builds a dynamic lib on Windows (in MinGW), Linux, & Mac OSX and has the following targets:

• libpd: (default) builds if no target is specified, builds the libpd.so/dylib/dll
• csharplib: builds libpdcsharp.dll (on Windows) or libpdcsharp.so (on Linux)
• javalib: builds libpdnative and the jni wrapper
• clean: removes the object files
• clobber: removes the linked library files
• install: installs libpd C library and C/C++* headers, set location with prefix= (default: /usr/local)
• uninstall: removes libpd C library and C/C++ headers, set location with prefix= (default: /usr/local)

* C++ headers are only installed if the C utility layers were built as well (ie. UTIL=true), see below.

Makefile options allow for conditional compilation of libpd util and pd extra externals sources into libpd as well as other options:

• UTIL=true, compiles libpd_wrapper/util ringbuffer and print concatenator (default true)
• EXTRA=true, compiles pure-data/extra externals which are then inited in libpd_init() (default true)
• MULTI=true, compiles libpd with multiple instance support
• DEBUG=true, compiles libpd with -Wall & no optimizations
• LOCALE=false, do not set the LC_NUMERIC number format to the default "C" locale* (default false)
• PORTAUDIO=true, compiles libpd with portaudio support (currently JAVA jni only)

For example, to build libpd without the util libs and extra externals:

make UTIL=false EXTRA=false

Note: The C++ wrapper requires UTIL=true as it uses the ringbuffer.

* See the Known Issues section for more info.

If you need to add custom search paths to the CFLAGS, you can specify them when building via:

make CFLAGS="-I/usr/local/lib"

java, csharp, objc, cpp, python

Glue for using libpd with Java, C#, Objective C, C++ and Python. Feel free to improve or add support for other languages such as Lua.

samples

Contains small sample programs and tests in the various supported languages.

Xcode Project

libpd.xcodeproj provides an Xcode project to build libpd + the Obj-C wrapper as a static library for iOS & macOS. Drag the libpd project into your existing Xcode project, then add libpd-ios (or libpd-osx) to the Linked Frameworks and Libraries in the General tab of your project target.

The Xcode project builds the following targets:

• libpd-ios: libpd and the Obj-C wrapper for iOS
• libpd-osx: libpd and the Obj-C wrapper for macOS
• libpd-ios-multi: libpd for iOS with multiple instance support
• libpd-osx-multi: libpd for macOS with multiple instance support

For detailed instructions, see Working with libpd in Xcode

If you are unfamiliar with how static libraries work or how to use them in Xcode, see this useful tutorial.

Note: libpd is tested with the release versions of Xcode. It is recommended that you avoid using beta or developer preview versions.

Java Builds

Ready-made binaries for Java are available at libpd-java-build: https://github.com/wivlaro/libpd-java-build/blob/master/libpd.jar (may not be up to date)

CocoaPods

If you are using Xcode to build iOS apps, you can use CocoaPods to add libpd to your project.

Use the following in your CocoaPods podfile:

pod 'libpd', :git => 'https://github.com/libpd/libpd', :submodules => true

C#

Installation from NuGet

LibPD is available as a NuGet package. If your platform's native dll is not included, you have to build it yourself with make csharplib and copy the resulting file to the output directory. Batch scripts for compilations on Windows with MinGW64 are included.

Building yourself

The C# library expects a file libpdcsharp.dll in its folder. Before using the project, you need to compile it.

Include csharp/LibPdBinding.csproj in your solution and reference the project in your application.

Windows

The wrapper can be built with MinGW-w64.

You need to install msys2, preferably the version for i686, because that version can build the 64bit versions as well.

Install msys2 using the instructions on the download page.

Install make and gcc by running pacman -S msys/make mingw32/mingw-w64-i686-gcc mingw64/mingw-w64-x86_64-gcc from the msys2 console. You can search for packages in msys2 with pacman -S -s <searchterm>.

For the 64 bit version of msys2 you also need to install winpthread by running pacman -S msys/mingw-w64-cross-winpthreads-git.

Edit mingw32_build_csharp.bat or mingw64_build_csharp.bat and execute it to create the native dll. You probably only need to change the variable for %MSYS2%. Usually you want the 32 bit version, as it will work on 64 bit Windows as well, but Unity 5 needs the 64 bit version.

For the 64 bit version, you also must use libs/mingw64/libwinptread-1.dll instead of libs/mingw32/libwinpthread-1.dll.

For a current version of libwinpthread-1.dll search in your msys2 installation folders.

Linux

If you want to use the library on Linux with Mono, you need the following changes to the LibPdBinding project:

• Compile the so file with make csharplib.
• Remove libpdcsharp.dll and libwinpthread-1.dll from LibPdBinding project.
• Add libpdcsharp.so to the LibPdBinding project.
• Set "Copy to Output Directory" for libpdcsharp.so to "Copy always"

Known Issues

How do I use libpd in Visual Studio?

Historically, Pd was designed to be built using the open source gcc & make and did not directly support being built in Visual Studio on Windows, mainly due to differences in C compiler versions. More recently, this has become less of an issue so it is becoming more possible to build libpd directly in Visual Studio, although this is still not currently supported by this project.

What does work is building the libpd C library using gcc and make using MinGW in msys on Windows. You can use the resulting .dll, .def, & .lib files with Visual Studio and the cpp wrapper is provided as an all header library so it should work directly within VS as well.

After building libpd in msys, you can "install" it to a temp folder to get only the libs and headers you need:

make install prefix=libpd-build

Problems with numbers in loaded patches or DSP output always seems to be 0

Pd expects numbers to be in an English format, ie. "0.3". If you are using a non-English language or locale setting on your system, it may be encoding numbers differently, ie. "0,3". This can lead to weird bugs in loaded patches where numbers seem wrong or end up truncated as 0.

By default, libpd is built with the LC_NUMERIC locale set to the "C" default, so this shouldn't be a problem. If you are using libpd within a project that requires specific locale settings, you will need to make sure libpd's LC_NUMERIC is left alone or at least reset it to "C" if working with a different numeric setting. If a non-English LC_NUMERIC is set, you will run into the number parsing issues mentioned above.

If you need to control LC_NUMERIC manually, you can build libpd without the call to setlocale() in libpd_init using the SETLOCALE=false makefile option or by setting the LIBPD_NO_NUMERIC define.

See libpd#130 for more info.