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 Jul 7 2006: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
  47 href="@PACKAGE_URL@pulseaudio-0.9.2.tar.gz">Version 0.9.2</a>
  48 released; changes include: rename project to PulseAudio (see <a
  49 href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/pulse.html">this blog
  50 article</a> for an explanation); increase maximum number of concurrent
  51 connections; fix latency interpolation; add support for reverse endian
  52 sound cards; add support for recording in <tt>padsp</tt>; reenable CPU
  53 load limiter; other bugfixes</p>
  54
  55 <div class="news-date">Fri Jun 2 2006: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
  56 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.9.1.tar.gz">Version 0.9.1</a>
  57 released; changes include: load modules even when libtool <tt>.la</tt>
  58 files are missing; generate better ALSA device names from
  59 <tt>module-detect</tt>; if an ALSA device doesn't support the
  60 requested number of channels or the frequency, accept what ALSA
  61 suggests instead; amd64 portability; drop <tt>.sh</tt> suffix of
  62 <tt>esdcompat.sh</tt>; build system fixes; No API or ABI changes were made</p>
  63
  64 <div class="news-date">Fri May 26 2006: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
  65 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.9.0.tar.gz">Version 0.9.0</a>
  66 released; changes include: new module <tt>module-volume-restore</tt>;
  67 new OSS API emulation tool <tt>padsp</tt>; require valid UTF8 strings
  68 everywhere; properly support ALSA channel maps for surround sound;
  69 increase maximum number of channels per stream to 32; add new threaded
  70 main loop API for synchronous programs; introduce real shared object
  71 versioning; a few API additions; many, many bugfixes</p>
  72
  73 <div class="news-date">Fri Apr 28 2006: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
  74 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.8.1.tar.gz">Version 0.8.1</a>
  75 released; changes include: support for specifying the channel map on
  76 the command lines of <tt>paplay</tt> and <tt>pacat</tt> and as
  77 arguments to the driver modules; ALSA hardware mixer compatibility;
  78 fix linking; properly remove <tt>PF_UNIX</tt> sockets when unloading
  79 protocol modules; fix sample cache; many other fixes</p>
  80
  81 <div class="news-date">Thu Apr 13 2006: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
  82 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.8.tar.gz">Version 0.8</a> released;
  83 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>
  84
  85 <div class="news-date">Sun Nov 21 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
  86 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.7.tar.gz">Version 0.7</a> released;
  87 changes include: IPv6 support; PID file support; publish credentials
  88 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>
  89
  90 <div class="news-date">Thu Oct 28 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
  91 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.6.tar.gz">Version 0.6</a> released;
  92 changes include: TCP wrappers support; don't load the complete sound
  93 file into memory when playing back using <tt>pa_play_file()</tt>;
  94 autoload API change; don't load all sound files as FLOAT32; shorten
  95 default buffers; client-side latency interpolation; add new user
  96 volume metrics; add <tt>module-tunnel</tt>, <tt>module-null-sink</tt>,
  97 <tt>module-match</tt> and new tool <tt>paplay</tt>; new API version
  98 macros; many client API improvements; correctly lock cookie file
  99 generation; correctly lock daemon autospawning; print daemon layout to
 100 STDERR on SIGHUP; new options for <tt>pacat</tt>: allow sample type specification.</p>
 101
 102 <div class="news-date">Mon Sep 24 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
 103 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.5.1.tar.gz">Version 0.5.1</a> released;
 104 changes include: improve esound protocol compatibility; fix
 105 autospawning via <tt>libesd</tt>; make use of POSIX capabilities;
 106 allow <tt>SCHED_FIFO</tt> scheduling only for users in group
 107 <tt>realtime</tt>; minor build system fix.</p>
 108
 109 <div class="news-date">Mon Sep 20 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
 110 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.5.tar.gz">Version 0.5</a> released;
 111 changes include: extensive API improvements, new module
 112 <tt>module-combine</tt> for combining multiple sound cards into one,
 113 gcc 2.95 compatibility, configuration files, add "lazy" samples,
 114 support for source and network latency measurements, add
 115 <tt>module-pipe-source</tt>, many other fixes and improvements.</p>
 116
 117 <div class="news-date">Wed Sep 8 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
 118 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.4.tar.gz">Version 0.4</a> released;
 119 changes include: daemon auto spawning, support for <tt>SCHED_FIFO</tt> scheduling, three new modules, proper logging, CPU load watchdog, many fixes.</p>
 120
 121 <div class="news-date">Fri Aug 27 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
 122 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.3.tar.gz">Version 0.3</a> released;
 123 changes include: support for both glib 2.0 and glib 1.2, future cancellation, API updates, many fixes, relicense client library to LGPL.</p>
 124
 125 <div class="news-date">Fri Aug 20 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
 126 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.2.tar.gz">Version 0.2</a> released;
 127 changes include: added sample cache, introspection API, client API
 128 documentation, module autoloading, glib support, a module for intercepting X11 bell events, and much more.</p>
 129
 130 <div class="news-date">Sat Jul 17 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
 131 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.1.tar.gz">Version 0.1</a> released</p>
 132
 133 <h2><a name="overview">Overview</a></h2>
 134
 135 <p><a href="http://pulseaudio.org/">PulseAudio</a> is a networked sound server for Linux and other
 136 Unix like operating systems and Microsoft Windows. It is intended to be an improved drop-in
 137 replacement for the <a
 138 href="http://www.tux.org/~ricdude/apps.html">Enlightened Sound
 139 Daemon</a> (ESOUND). In addition to the features ESOUND provides
 140 PulseAudio has:</p>
 141
 142 <ul>
 143   <li>Extensible plugin architecture (by loading dynamic loadable modules with <tt>dlopen()</tt>)</li>
 144   <li>Support for more than one sink/source</li>
 145   <li>Better low latency behaviour</li>
 146   <li>Embedabble into other software (the core is available as C library)</li>
 147   <li>Completely asynchronous C API</li>
 148   <li>Simple command line interface for reconfiguring the daemon while running</li>
 149   <li>Flexible, implicit sample type conversion and resampling</li>
 150   <li>"Zero-Copy" architecture</li>
 151   <li>Module autoloading</li>
 152   <li>Very accurate latency measurement for playback and recording.</li>
 153   <li>May be used to combine multiple sound cards to one (with sample rate adjustment)</li>
 154   <li>Client side latency interpolation</li>
 155   <li>Ability to fully synchronize multiple playback streams</li>
 156 </ul>
 157
 158 <p>Both the core and the client API are completely asynchronous making
 159 use of a simple main loop abstraction layer. This allows easy
 160 integration with asynchronous applications using the
 161 <tt>glib</tt>/<tt>gtk</tt> mainloop. Since the asynchronous API
 162 available through <tt>libpulse</tt> is quite difficult to use there is
 163 a simplified synchronous API wrapper <tt>libpulse-simple</tt>
 164 available. A simple main loop implementation is available as well.</p>
 165
 166 <p>The following modules are currently available:</p>
 167
 168 <ul>
 169   <li><tt>module-oss</tt>: driver for <a href="http://www.opensound.com">Open Sound System</a> (OSS) audio sinks and sources.</li>
 170   <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>
 171   <li><tt>module-alsa-sink</tt>, <tt>module-alsa-source</tt>: drivers for <a href="http://www.alsa-project.org/">Advanced Linux
 172 Sound Architecture</a> (ALSA) sinks and sources</li>
 173   <li><tt>module-solaris</tt>: drivers for Solaris audio sinks and sources</li>
 174   <li><tt>module-waveout</tt>: drivers for Microsoft Windows audio sinks and sources</li>
 175   <li><tt>module-pipe-sink</tt>, <tt>module-pipe-source</tt>: demonstration module providing UNIX FIFOs backed sinks/sources</li>
 176   <li><tt>module-combine</tt>: combine multiple sinks into one, adjusting the sample rate if the their clocks deviate.</li>
 177   <li><tt>module-sine</tt>: a sine generate sink input.</li>
 178   <li><tt>module-x11-bell</tt>: play a sample from the sample cache on every X11 bell event.</li>
 179   <li><tt>module-x11-publish</tt>: store PulseAudio credentials in the X11 root window.</li>
 180   <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>
 181   <li><tt>module-native-protocol-tcp</tt>, <tt>module-native-protocol-unix</tt>: Native PulseAudio protocol (for TCP/IP resp. UNIX domain sockets)</li>
 182   <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>
 183   <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>
 184   <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>
 185   <li><tt>module-tunnel-sink</tt>, <tt>module-tunnel-source</tt>: make sinks/sources from other hosts available locally.</li>
 186   <li><tt>module-match</tt>: adjust volume automatically for newly created playback streams based on a regular expression matching table.</li>
 187   <li><tt>module-volume-restore</tt>: much like <tt>module-match</tt>, but create rules fully automatically based on the client name.</li>
 188   <li><tt>module-null-sink</tt>: a clocked sink similar to <tt>/dev/null</tt>.</li>
 189   <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>
 190   <li><tt>module-detect</tt>: a module which automatically detects what sound hardware is available locally and which loads the required driver modules.</li>
 191   <li><tt>module-lirc</tt>: a module to control the volume of a sink with infrared remote controls supported by LIRC.</li>
 192   <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>
 193   <li><tt>module-zeroconf-publish</tt>: a module to publish local sources/sinks using mDNS zeroconf.</li>
 194   <li><tt>module-rtp-send</tt>, <tt>module-rtp-recv</tt>: modules to implement RTP/SAP/SDP based audio streaming.</li>
 195   <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>
 196 </ul>
 197
 198 <p>A GTK GUI manager application for PulseAudio is the <a
 199 href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/paman/">PulseAudio
 200 Manager</a>. Other GTK GUI tool for PulseAudio are the <a
 201 href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/pavumeter">PulseAudio Volume
 202 Meter</a>, <a
 203 href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/padevchooser">PulseAudio Device Chooser</a> and the <a
 204 href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/pavucontrol">PulseAudio Volume
 205 Control</a> .</p>
 206
 207 <p>There are output plugins for <a
 208 href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/xmms-pulse/">XMMS</a>, <a
 209 href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/libao-pulse/">libao</a>
 210 (merged in <tt>libao</tt> SVN) and <a
 211 href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/gst-pulse/">gstreamer</a>
 212 (merged in <tt>gstreamer-plugins</tt> CVS).</p>
 213
 214 <p>PulseAudio was formerly known as Polypaudio.</p>
 215
 216 <h2><a name="status">Current Status</a></h2>
 217
 218 <p>Version @PACKAGE_VERSION@ is quite usable. It matches and supersedes ESOUND's feature set in nearly all areas.</p>
 219
 220 <h2><a name="documentation">Documentation</a></h2>
 221
 222 <p>There is some preliminary documentation available: <a
 223 href="modules.html"><tt>modules.html</tt></a>, <a
 224 href="cli.html"><tt>cli.html</tt></a>, <a
 225 href="daemon.html"><tt>daemon.html</tt></a> and <a href="FAQ.html"><tt>FAQ.html</tt></a>.</p>
 226
 227 <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>
 228
 229 <h3>First Steps</h3>
 230
 231 <p>Simply start the PulseAudio daemon with the argument <tt>-nC</tt></p>
 232
 233 <pre>pulseaudio -nC</pre>
 234
 235 <p>This will present you a screen like this:</p>
 236
 237 <pre>Welcome to PulseAudio! Use "help" for usage information.
 238 &gt;&gt;&gt; </pre>
 239
 240 <p>Now you can issue CLI commands as described in <a
 241 href="cli.html"><tt>cli.html</tt></a>. Another way to start
 242 PulseAudio is by specifying a configuration script like that one included in the distribution on the
 243 command line :</p>
 244
 245 <pre>pulseaudio -nF pulseaudio.pa</pre>
 246
 247 <p>This will load some drivers and protocols automatically.</p>
 248
 249 <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>
 250
 251 <p><b>Beware!</b> Unless you pass the option <tt>--sysconfdir=/etc</tt> to
 252 <tt>configure</tt>, the directory <tt>/etc/pulse/</tt> is really
 253 <tt>/usr/local/etc/pulse/</tt>.</p>
 254
 255 <h3>Developing PulseAudio Clients</h3>
 256
 257 <p>You may browse the <a href="http://www.doxygen.org/">Doxygen</a> generated <a
 258 href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/pulseaudio/doxygen/">programing
 259 documentation</a> for the client API. (Run <tt>make doxygen</tt> to generate this documentation from the source tree)</p>
 260
 261 <h3>Developing PulseAudio Modules</h3>
 262
 263 <p>There are several reasons for writing loadable modules for PulseAudio:</p>
 264
 265 <ul>
 266   <li>Extended device driver support</li>
 267   <li>Protocol support beyond ESOUND's protocol and the native protocol. (such as NAS or a subset of aRts)</li>
 268   <li>New programming interfaces such as XMLRPC or DBUS for controlling the daemon.</li>
 269   <li>Hooking audio event sources directly into PulseAudio (similar to <tt>module-x11-bell</tt>)</li>
 270   <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>
 271 </ul>
 272
 273 <p>There is currently no documentation how to write loadable modules
 274 for PulseAudio. <i>Read the source, Luke!</i> If you are interested in
 275 writing new modules feel free to contact the author in case you have any
 276 questions.</p>
 277
 278 <h2><a name="requirements">Requirements</a></h2>
 279
 280 <p>Currently, PulseAudio> is tested on Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris and Microsoft Windows. It requires an OSS, ALSA, Win32 or Solaris compatible soundcard.</p>
 281
 282 <p>PulseAudio was developed and tested on Debian GNU/Linux
 283 "testing" from November 2004, it should work on most other Linux
 284 distributions (and maybe Unix versions) since it uses GNU autoconf and
 285 GNU libtool for source code configuration and shared library
 286 management.</p>
 287
 288 <p>Pulseaudio needs <a
 289 href="http://www.mega-nerd.com/SRC/">Secret Rabbit Code (aka
 290 <tt>libsamplerate</tt>)</a>, <a
 291 href="http://www.mega-nerd.com/libsndfile"><tt>libsndfile</tt></a>, <a
 292 href="http://liboil.freedesktop.org/wiki/"><tt>liboil</tt></a>.</p>
 293
 294 <p>Optionally it can make use of <tt>libwrap</tt>, <a
 295 href="http://www.alsa-project.org/">alsa-lib</a>, <a
 296 href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/libasyncns/">libasyncns</a>,
 297 <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
 298 href="http://www.gtk.org/">GLIB</a>. (The latter is required for
 299 building the GLIB main loop integration module only.)</p>
 300
 301 <h2><a name="installation">Installation</a></h2>
 302
 303 <p>As this package is made with the GNU autotools you should run
 304 <tt>./configure</tt> inside the distribution directory for configuring
 305 the source tree. After that you should run <tt>make</tt> for
 306 compilation and <tt>make install</tt> (as root) for installation of
 307 PulseAudio.</p>
 308
 309 <h2><a name="acks">Acknowledgements</a></h2>
 310
 311 <p>Eric B. Mitchell for writing ESOUND</p>
 312
 313 <p>Jeff Waugh for creating Ubuntu packages (and hopefully soon Debian)</p>
 314
 315 <p>Miguel Freitas for writing a PulseAudio driver for Xine</p>
 316
 317 <p>Joe Marcus Clarke for porting PulseAudio to FreeBSD</p>
 318
 319 <p><a href="http://www.cendio.com">Cendio AB</a> for paying for Pierre's work on PulseAudio</p>
 320
 321 <p>Sebastien ESTIENNE for testing</p>
 322
 323 <p>Igor Zubkov for some portability patches</p>
 324
 325 <p>Jan Schmidt for some latency interpolation love</p>
 326
 327 <h2><a name="download">Download</a></h2>
 328
 329 <p>The newest release is always available from <a href="@PACKAGE_URL@">@PACKAGE_URL@</a></p>
 330
 331 <p>The current release is <a href="@PACKAGE_URL@pulseaudio-@PACKAGE_VERSION@.tar.gz">@PACKAGE_VERSION@</a></p>
 332
 333 <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>, <a href="http://pulseaudio.org/browser/trunk">Trac</a>): </p>
 334
 335 <pre>svn checkout svn://0pointer.de/pulseaudio/trunk pulseaudio</pre>
 336
 337 <h2><a name="community">Community</a></h2>
 338
 339 <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>
 340
 341 <p>There is a general discussion <a href="https://tango.0pointer.de/mailman/listinfo/pulseaudio-discuss">mailing list for PulseAudio</a> available. In addition, you can subscribe to <a href="https://tango.0pointer.de/mailman/listinfo/pulseaudio-commits">SVN changes</a> and <a href="https://tango.0pointer.de/mailman/listinfo/pulseaudio-tickets">Trac Tickets</a>.</p>
 342
 343 <p>PulseAudio is being tracked at <a href="http://cia.navi.cx/stats/project/polypaudio">CIA</a>.</p>
 344
 345 <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>
 346
 347 <p>The main project homepage is <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">http://avahi.org/</a>.</p>
 348
 349 <p><b>Please report bugs to <a href="http://avahi.org/newticket">our Trac ticket system</a>.</b></p>
 350
 351 <hr/>
 352 <address class="grey">Lennart Poettering &lt;@PACKAGE_BUGREPORT@&gt;, July 2006</address>
 353 <div class="grey"><i>$Id$</i></div>
 354
 355 </body>
 356 </html>