code.delx.au - pulseaudio/blob - doc/README.html.in

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  11 <h1><a name="top">PulseAudio @PACKAGE_VERSION@</a></h1>
  12
  13 <p><i>Copyright 2004-2006 Lennart Poettering &lt;@PACKAGE_BUGREPORT@&gt;</i> and Pierre Ossman</p>
  14
  15 <ul class="toc">
  16     <li><a href="#license">License</a></li>
  17     <li><a href="#news">News</a></li>
  18     <li><a href="#overview">Overview</a></li>
  19     <li><a href="#status">Current Status</a></li>
  20     <li><a href="#documentation">Documentation</a></li>
  21     <li><a href="#requirements">Requirements</a></li>
  22     <li><a href="#installation">Installation</a></li>
  23     <li><a href="#acks">Acknowledgements</a></li>
  24     <li><a href="#download">Download</a></li>
  25     <li><a href="#community">Community</a></li>
  26 </ul>
  27
  28 <h2><a name="license">License</a></h2>
  29
  30 <p>This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
  31 modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as
  32 published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the
  33 License, or (at your option) any later version.</p>
  34
  35 <p>This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
  36 WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
  37 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
  38 Lesser General Public License for more details.</p>
  39
  40 <p>You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License
  41 along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
  42 Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.</p>
  43
  44 <h2><a name="news">News</a></h2>
  45
  46 <div class="news-date">Fri Jun 2 2006: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
  47 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.9.1.tar.gz">Version 0.9.1</a>
  48 released; changes include: load modules even when libtool <tt>.la</tt>
  49 files are missing; generate better ALSA device names from
  50 <tt>module-detect</tt>; if an ALSA device doesn't support the
  51 requested number of channels or the frequency, accept what ALSA
  52 suggests instead; amd64 portability; drop <tt>.sh</tt> suffix of
  53 <tt>esdcompat.sh</tt>; build system fixes; No API or ABI changes were made</p>
  54
  55 <div class="news-date">Fri May 26 2006: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
  56 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.9.0.tar.gz">Version 0.9.0</a>
  57 released; changes include: new module <tt>module-volume-restore</tt>;
  58 new OSS API emulation tool <tt>padsp</tt>; require valid UTF8 strings
  59 everywhere; properly support ALSA channel maps for surround sound;
  60 increase maximum number of channels per stream to 32; add new threaded
  61 main loop API for synchronous programs; introduce real shared object
  62 versioning; a few API additions; many, many bugfixes</p>
  63
  64 <div class="news-date">Fri Apr 28 2006: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
  65 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.8.1.tar.gz">Version 0.8.1</a>
  66 released; changes include: support for specifying the channel map on
  67 the command lines of <tt>paplay</tt> and <tt>pacat</tt> and as
  68 arguments to the driver modules; ALSA hardware mixer compatibility;
  69 fix linking; properly remove <tt>PF_UNIX</tt> sockets when unloading
  70 protocol modules; fix sample cache; many other fixes</p>
  71
  72 <div class="news-date">Thu Apr 13 2006: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
  73 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.8.tar.gz">Version 0.8</a> released;
  74 changes include: too many to count - consider reading <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/polypaudio-0.8.html">this blog entry</a> for more information; many, many minor fixes.</p>
  75
  76 <div class="news-date">Sun Nov 21 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
  77 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.7.tar.gz">Version 0.7</a> released;
  78 changes include: IPv6 support; PID file support; publish credentials
  79 in X11 root window (<tt>module-x11-publish</tt>; new tool <tt>pacmd</tt>; ESOUND backend; new command <tt>load-sample-dir-lazy</tt>; many, many minor fixes.</p>
  80
  81 <div class="news-date">Thu Oct 28 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
  82 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.6.tar.gz">Version 0.6</a> released;
  83 changes include: TCP wrappers support; don't load the complete sound
  84 file into memory when playing back using <tt>pa_play_file()</tt>;
  85 autoload API change; don't load all sound files as FLOAT32; shorten
  86 default buffers; client-side latency interpolation; add new user
  87 volume metrics; add <tt>module-tunnel</tt>, <tt>module-null-sink</tt>,
  88 <tt>module-match</tt> and new tool <tt>paplay</tt>; new API version
  89 macros; many client API improvements; correctly lock cookie file
  90 generation; correctly lock daemon autospawning; print daemon layout to
  91 STDERR on SIGHUP; new options for <tt>pacat</tt>: allow sample type specification.</p>
  92
  93 <div class="news-date">Mon Sep 24 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
  94 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.5.1.tar.gz">Version 0.5.1</a> released;
  95 changes include: improve esound protocol compatibility; fix
  96 autospawning via <tt>libesd</tt>; make use of POSIX capabilities;
  97 allow <tt>SCHED_FIFO</tt> scheduling only for users in group
  98 <tt>realtime</tt>; minor build system fix.</p>
  99
 100 <div class="news-date">Mon Sep 20 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
 101 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.5.tar.gz">Version 0.5</a> released;
 102 changes include: extensive API improvements, new module
 103 <tt>module-combine</tt> for combining multiple sound cards into one,
 104 gcc 2.95 compatibility, configuration files, add "lazy" samples,
 105 support for source and network latency measurements, add
 106 <tt>module-pipe-source</tt>, many other fixes and improvements.</p>
 107
 108 <div class="news-date">Wed Sep 8 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
 109 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.4.tar.gz">Version 0.4</a> released;
 110 changes include: daemon auto spawning, support for <tt>SCHED_FIFO</tt> scheduling, three new modules, proper logging, CPU load watchdog, many fixes.</p>
 111
 112 <div class="news-date">Fri Aug 27 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
 113 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.3.tar.gz">Version 0.3</a> released;
 114 changes include: support for both glib 2.0 and glib 1.2, future cancellation, API updates, many fixes, relicense client library to LGPL.</p>
 115
 116 <div class="news-date">Fri Aug 20 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
 117 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.2.tar.gz">Version 0.2</a> released;
 118 changes include: added sample cache, introspection API, client API
 119 documentation, module autoloading, glib support, a module for intercepting X11 bell events, and much more.</p>
 120
 121 <div class="news-date">Sat Jul 17 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
 122 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.1.tar.gz">Version 0.1</a> released</p>
 123
 124 <h2><a name="overview">Overview</a></h2>
 125
 126 <p>PulseAudio is a networked sound server for Linux and other
 127 Unix like operating systems and Microsoft Windows. It is intended to be an improved drop-in
 128 replacement for the <a
 129 href="http://www.tux.org/~ricdude/apps.html">Enlightened Sound
 130 Daemon</a> (ESOUND). In addition to the features ESOUND provides
 131 PulseAudio has:</p>
 132
 133 <ul>
 134   <li>Extensible plugin architecture (by loading dynamic loadable modules with <tt>dlopen()</tt>)</li>
 135   <li>Support for more than one sink/source</li>
 136   <li>Better low latency behaviour</li>
 137   <li>Embedabble into other software (the core is available as C library)</li>
 138   <li>Completely asynchronous C API</li>
 139   <li>Simple command line interface for reconfiguring the daemon while running</li>
 140   <li>Flexible, implicit sample type conversion and resampling</li>
 141   <li>"Zero-Copy" architecture</li>
 142   <li>Module autoloading</li>
 143   <li>Very accurate latency measurement for playback and recording.</li>
 144   <li>May be used to combine multiple sound cards to one (with sample rate adjustment)</li>
 145   <li>Client side latency interpolation</li>
 146   <li>Ability to fully synchronize multiple playback streams</li>
 147 </ul>
 148
 149 <p>Both the core and the client API are completely asynchronous making
 150 use of a simple main loop abstraction layer. This allows easy
 151 integration with asynchronous applications using the
 152 <tt>glib</tt>/<tt>gtk</tt> mainloop. Since the asynchronous API
 153 available through <tt>libpulse</tt> is quite difficult to use there is
 154 a simplified synchronous API wrapper <tt>libpulse-simple</tt>
 155 available. A simple main loop implementation is available as well.</p>
 156
 157 <p>The following modules are currently available:</p>
 158
 159 <ul>
 160   <li><tt>module-oss</tt>: driver for <a href="http://www.opensound.com">Open Sound System</a> (OSS) audio sinks and sources.</li>
 161   <li><tt>module-oss-mmap</tt>: same as above, but uses <tt>mmap()</tt> access to the audio buffer. Not as compatible bot more accurate in latency calculations</li>
 162   <li><tt>module-alsa-sink</tt>, <tt>module-alsa-source</tt>: drivers for <a href="http://www.alsa-project.org/">Advanced Linux
 163 Sound Architecture</a> (ALSA) sinks and sources</li>
 164   <li><tt>module-solaris</tt>: drivers for Solaris audio sinks and sources</li>
 165   <li><tt>module-waveout</tt>: drivers for Microsoft Windows audio sinks and sources</li>
 166   <li><tt>module-pipe-sink</tt>, <tt>module-pipe-source</tt>: demonstration module providing UNIX FIFOs backed sinks/sources</li>
 167   <li><tt>module-combine</tt>: combine multiple sinks into one, adjusting the sample rate if the their clocks deviate.</li>
 168   <li><tt>module-sine</tt>: a sine generate sink input.</li>
 169   <li><tt>module-x11-bell</tt>: play a sample from the sample cache on every X11 bell event.</li>
 170   <li><tt>module-x11-publish</tt>: store PulseAudio credentials in the X11 root window.</li>
 171   <li><tt>module-esound-protocol-tcp</tt>, <tt>module-esound-protocol-unix</tt>: <a href="http://www.tux.org/~ricdude/apps.html">ESOUND</a> compatibility modules (for TCP/IP resp. UNIX domain sockets)</li>
 172   <li><tt>module-native-protocol-tcp</tt>, <tt>module-native-protocol-unix</tt>: Native PulseAudio protocol (for TCP/IP resp. UNIX domain sockets)</li>
 173   <li><tt>module-simple-protocol-tcp</tt>, <tt>module-simple-protocol-unix</tt>: Simplistic protocol for playback/capture for usage with tools like <tt>netcat</tt> (for TCP/IP resp. UNIX domain sockets)</li>
 174   <li><tt>module-cli-protocol-tcp</tt>, <tt>module-cli-protocol-unix</tt>, <tt>module-cli</tt>: Expose PulseAudio's internals whith a simple command line interface. (for TCP/IP resp. UNIX domain sockets resp. STDIN/STDOUT)</li>
 175   <li><tt>module-http-protocol-tcp</tt>: Spawns a small HTTP server which can be used to introspect the PulseAudio server with a web browser.</li>
 176   <li><tt>module-tunnel-sink</tt>, <tt>module-tunnel-source</tt>: make sinks/sources from other hosts available locally.</li>
 177   <li><tt>module-match</tt>: adjust volume automatically for newly created playback streams based on a regular expression matching table.</li>
 178   <li><tt>module-volume-restore</tt>: much like <tt>module-match</tt>, but create rules fully automatically based on the client name.</li>
 179   <li><tt>module-null-sink</tt>: a clocked sink similar to <tt>/dev/null</tt>.</li>
 180   <li><tt>module-esound-sink</tt>: a sink for forwarding audio data to an <a href="http://www.tux.org/~ricdude/apps.html">ESOUND</a> server.</li>
 181   <li><tt>module-detect</tt>: a module which automatically detects what sound hardware is available locally and which loads the required driver modules.</li>
 182   <li><tt>module-lirc</tt>: a module to control the volume of a sink with infrared remote controls supported by LIRC.</li>
 183   <li><tt>module-mmkbd-evdev</tt>: a module to control the volume of a sink with the special volume keys of a multimeda keyboard.</li>
 184   <li><tt>module-zeroconf-publish</tt>: a module to publish local sources/sinks using mDNS zeroconf.</li>
 185   <li><tt>module-rtp-send</tt>, <tt>module-rtp-recv</tt>: modules to implement RTP/SAP/SDP based audio streaming.</li>
 186   <li><tt>module-jack-sink</tt>, <tt>module-jack-source</tt>: connect to a <a href="http://jackit.sourceforge.net/">JACK Audio Connection Kit</a> server. (A sound server for professional audio production)</li>
 187 </ul>
 188
 189 <p>A GTK GUI manager application for PulseAudio is the <a
 190 href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/paman/">PulseAudio
 191 Manager</a>. Other GTK GUI tool for PulseAudio are the <a
 192 href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/pavumeter">PulseAudio Volume
 193 Meter</a>  and the <a
 194 href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/pavucontrol">PulseAudio Volume
 195 Control</a> .</p>
 196
 197 <p>There are output plugins for <a
 198 href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/xmms-pulse/">XMMS</a>, <a
 199 href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/libao-pulse/">libao</a>
 200 (merged in <tt>libao</tt> SVN) and <a
 201 href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/gst-pulse/">gstreamer</a>
 202 (merged in <tt>gstreamer-plugins</tt> CVS), <a
 203 href="http://mplayerhq.hu">MPlayer</a> (merged in MPlayer CVS) and <a
 204 href="http://xine.sf.net/">Xine</a> (merged in Xine CVS). Drivers for
 205 <a href="http://www.portaudio.com/">PortAudio</a> will be released
 206 shortly.</p>
 207
 208 <p>PulseAudio was formerly known as Polypaudio.</p>
 209
 210 <h2><a name="status">Current Status</a></h2>
 211
 212 <p>Version @PACKAGE_VERSION@ is quite usable. It matches and supersedes ESOUND's feature set in nearly all areas.</p>
 213
 214 <h2><a name="documentation">Documentation</a></h2>
 215
 216 <p>There is some preliminary documentation available: <a
 217 href="modules.html"><tt>modules.html</tt></a>, <a
 218 href="cli.html"><tt>cli.html</tt></a>, <a
 219 href="daemon.html"><tt>daemon.html</tt></a> and <a href="FAQ.html"><tt>FAQ.html</tt></a>.</p>
 220
 221 <p>There is a <a href="http://www.edgewall.com/products/trac/">Trac</a> based <a href="http://0pointer.de/trac/pulseaudio/">Wiki for PulseAudio</a> available.</p>
 222
 223 <h3>First Steps</h3>
 224
 225 <p>Simply start the PulseAudio daemon with the argument <tt>-nC</tt></p>
 226
 227 <pre>pulseaudio -nC</pre>
 228
 229 <p>This will present you a screen like this:</p>
 230
 231 <pre>Welcome to PulseAudio! Use "help" for usage information.
 232 &gt;&gt;&gt; </pre>
 233
 234 <p>Now you can issue CLI commands as described in <a
 235 href="cli.html"><tt>cli.html</tt></a>. Another way to start
 236 PulseAudio is by specifying a configuration script like that one included in the distribution on the
 237 command line :</p>
 238
 239 <pre>pulseaudio -nF pulseaudio.pa</pre>
 240
 241 <p>This will load some drivers and protocols automatically.</p>
 242
 243 <p>The best idea is to configure your daemon in <tt>/etc/pulse/daemon.conf</tt> and <tt>/etc/pulse/default.pa</tt> and to run PulseAudio without any arguments.</p>
 244
 245 <p><b>Beware!</b> Unless you pass the option <tt>--sysconfdir=/etc</tt> to
 246 <tt>configure</tt>, the directory <tt>/etc/pulse/</tt> is really
 247 <tt>/usr/local/etc/pulse/</tt>.</p>
 248
 249 <h3>Developing PulseAudio Clients</h3>
 250
 251 <p>You may browse the <a href="http://www.doxygen.org/">Doxygen</a> generated <a
 252 href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/pulseaudio/doxygen/">programing
 253 documentation</a> for the client API. (Run <tt>make doxygen</tt> to generate this documentation from the source tree)</p>
 254
 255 <h3>Developing PulseAudio Modules</h3>
 256
 257 <p>There are several reasons for writing loadable modules for PulseAudio:</p>
 258
 259 <ul>
 260   <li>Extended device driver support</li>
 261   <li>Protocol support beyond ESOUND's protocol and the native protocol. (such as NAS or a subset of aRts)</li>
 262   <li>New programming interfaces such as XMLRPC or DBUS for controlling the daemon.</li>
 263   <li>Hooking audio event sources directly into PulseAudio (similar to <tt>module-x11-bell</tt>)</li>
 264   <li>For low latency applications such as VOIP: load the VOIP core directly into PulseAudio and have a slim GUI frontend to control it.</li>
 265 </ul>
 266
 267 <p>There is currently no documentation how to write loadable modules
 268 for PulseAudio. <i>Read the source, Luke!</i> If you are interested in
 269 writing new modules feel free to contact the author in case you have any
 270 questions.</p>
 271
 272 <h2><a name="requirements">Requirements</a></h2>
 273
 274 <p>Currently, PulseAudio> is tested on Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris and Microsoft Windows. It requires an OSS, ALSA, Win32 or Solaris compatible soundcard.</p>
 275
 276 <p>PulseAudio was developed and tested on Debian GNU/Linux
 277 "testing" from November 2004, it should work on most other Linux
 278 distributions (and maybe Unix versions) since it uses GNU autoconf and
 279 GNU libtool for source code configuration and shared library
 280 management.</p>
 281
 282 <p>Pulseaudio needs <a
 283 href="http://www.mega-nerd.com/SRC/">Secret Rabbit Code (aka
 284 <tt>libsamplerate</tt>)</a>, <a
 285 href="http://www.mega-nerd.com/libsndfile"><tt>libsndfile</tt></a>, <a
 286 href="http://liboil.freedesktop.org/wiki/"><tt>liboil</tt></a>.</p>
 287
 288 <p>Optionally it can make use of <tt>libwrap</tt>, <a
 289 href="http://www.alsa-project.org/">alsa-lib</a>, <a
 290 href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/libasyncns/">libasyncns</a>,
 291 <a href="http://www.lirc.org/">lirc</a>, <a href="http://www.porchdogsoft.com/products/howl/">HOWL</a> (or preferably the compatibility layer included in its superior replacement <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">Avahi</a>) and <a
 292 href="http://www.gtk.org/">GLIB</a>. (The latter is required for
 293 building the GLIB main loop integration module only.)</p>
 294
 295 <h2><a name="installation">Installation</a></h2>
 296
 297 <p>As this package is made with the GNU autotools you should run
 298 <tt>./configure</tt> inside the distribution directory for configuring
 299 the source tree. After that you should run <tt>make</tt> for
 300 compilation and <tt>make install</tt> (as root) for installation of
 301 PulseAudio.</p>
 302
 303 <h2><a name="acks">Acknowledgements</a></h2>
 304
 305 <p>Eric B. Mitchell for writing ESOUND</p>
 306
 307 <p>Jeff Waugh for creating Ubuntu packages (and hopefully soon Debian)</p>
 308
 309 <p>Miguel Freitas for writing a PulseAudio driver for Xine</p>
 310
 311 <p>Joe Marcus Clarke for porting PulseAudio to FreeBSD</p>
 312
 313 <p><a href="http://www.cendio.com">Cendio AB</a> for paying for Pierre's work on PulseAudio</p>
 314
 315 <p>Sebastien ESTIENNE for testing</p>
 316
 317 <p>Igor Zubkov for some portability patches</p>
 318
 319 <h2><a name="download">Download</a></h2>
 320
 321 <p>The newest release is always available from <a href="@PACKAGE_URL@">@PACKAGE_URL@</a></p>
 322
 323 <p>The current release is <a href="@PACKAGE_URL@pulseaudio-@PACKAGE_VERSION@.tar.gz">@PACKAGE_VERSION@</a></p>
 324
 325 <p>Get PulseAudio's development sources from the <a href="http://subversion.tigris.org/">Subversion</a> <a href="svn://0pointer.de/pulseaudio">repository</a> (<a href="http://0pointer.de/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/?root=pulseaudio">viewcvs</a>): </p>
 326
 327 <pre>svn checkout svn://0pointer.de/pulseaudio/trunk pulseaudio</pre>
 328
 329 <h2><a name="community">Community</a></h2>
 330
 331 <p>If you want to be notified whenever I release a new version of this software use the subscription feature of <a href="http://freshmeat.net/projects/pulseaudio/">Freshmeat</a>.</p>
 332
 333 <p>There is a general discussion <a href="https://tango.0pointer.de/mailman/listinfo/polypaudio-discuss">mailing list for PulseAudio</a> available. In addition, you can subscribe to <a href="https://tango.0pointer.de/mailman/listinfo/polypaudio-commits">SVN changes</a> and <a href="https://tango.0pointer.de/mailman/listinfo/polypaudio-tickets">Trac Tickets</a>.</p>
 334
 335 <p>PulseAudio is being tracked at <a href="http://cia.navi.cx/stats/project/polypaudio">CIA</a>.</p>
 336
 337 <p>There's a chance to meet the PulseAudio developers on our <a href="irc://irc.freenode.org/pulseaudio">IRC channel #pulseaudio on irc.freenode.org</a>.</p>
 338
 339 <p>There is a <a href="http://www.edgewall.com/products/trac/">Trac</a> based <a href="http://0pointer.de/trac/pulseaudio/">Wiki for PulseAudio</a> available.</p>
 340
 341 <p><b>Please report bugs to <a href="http://0pointer.de/trac/pulseaudio/newticket">our Trac ticket system</a>.</b></p>
 342
 343 <hr/>
 344 <address class="grey">Lennart Poettering &lt;@PACKAGE_BUGREPORT@&gt;, June 2006</address>
 345 <div class="grey"><i>$Id$</i></div>
 346
 347 </body>
 348 </html>