1/* FLAC - Free Lossless Audio Codec
2 * Copyright (C) 2001,2002,2003,2004,2005,2006,2007 Josh Coalson
3 *
4 * This file is part the FLAC project. FLAC is comprised of several
5 * components distributed under difference licenses. The codec libraries
6 * are distributed under Xiph.Org's BSD-like license (see the file
7 * COPYING.Xiph in this distribution). All other programs, libraries, and
8 * plugins are distributed under the LGPL or GPL (see COPYING.LGPL and
9 * COPYING.GPL). The documentation is distributed under the Gnu FDL (see
10 * COPYING.FDL). Each file in the FLAC distribution contains at the top the
11 * terms under which it may be distributed.
12 *
13 * Since this particular file is relevant to all components of FLAC,
14 * it may be distributed under the Xiph.Org license, which is the least
15 * restrictive of those mentioned above. See the file COPYING.Xiph in this
16 * distribution.
17 */
18
19
20FLAC (http://flac.sourceforge.net/) is an Open Source lossless audio
21codec developed by Josh Coalson.
22
23FLAC is comprised of
24 * `libFLAC', a library which implements reference encoders and
25 decoders for native FLAC and Ogg FLAC, and a metadata interface
26 * `libFLAC++', a C++ object wrapper library around libFLAC
27 * `flac', a command-line program for encoding and decoding files
28 * `metaflac', a command-line program for viewing and editing FLAC
29 metadata
30 * player plugins for XMMS and Winamp
31 * user and API documentation
32
33The libraries (libFLAC, libFLAC++) are
34licensed under Xiph.org's BSD-like license (see COPYING.Xiph). All other
35programs and plugins are licensed under the GNU General Public License
36(see COPYING.GPL). The documentation is licensed under the GNU Free
37Documentation License (see COPYING.FDL).
38
39
40===============================================================================
41FLAC - 1.2.1 - Contents
42===============================================================================
43
44- Introduction
45- Prerequisites
46- Note to embedded developers
47- Building in a GNU environment
48- Building with Makefile.lite
49- Building with MSVC
50- Building on Mac OS X
51
52
53===============================================================================
54Introduction
55===============================================================================
56
57This is the source release for the FLAC project. See
58
59 doc/html/index.html
60
61for full documentation.
62
63A brief description of the directory tree:
64
65 doc/ the HTML documentation
66 include/ public include files for libFLAC and libFLAC++
67 man/ the man page for `flac'
68 src/ the source code and private headers
69 test/ the test scripts
70
71
72===============================================================================
73Prerequisites
74===============================================================================
75
76To build FLAC with support for Ogg FLAC you must have built and installed
77libogg according to the specific instructions below. You must have
78libogg 1.1.2 or greater, or there will be seeking problems with Ogg FLAC.
79
80If you are building on x86 and want the assembly optimizations, you will
81need to have NASM >= 0.98.30 installed according to the specific instructions
82below.
83
84
85===============================================================================
86Note to embedded developers
87===============================================================================
88
89libFLAC has grown larger over time as more functionality has been
90included, but much of it may be unnecessary for a particular embedded
91implementation. Unused parts may be pruned by some simple editing of
92configure.in and src/libFLAC/Makefile.am; the following dependency
93graph shows which modules may be pruned without breaking things
94further down:
95
96metadata.h
97 stream_decoder.h
98 format.h
99
100stream_encoder.h
101 stream_decoder.h
102 format.h
103
104stream_decoder.h
105 format.h
106
107In other words, for pure decoding applications, both the stream encoder
108and metadata editing interfaces can be safely removed.
109
110There is a section dedicated to embedded use in the libFLAC API
111HTML documentation (see doc/html/api/index.html).
112
113Also, there are several places in the libFLAC code with comments marked
114with "OPT:" where a #define can be changed to enable code that might be
115faster on a specific platform. Experimenting with these can yield faster
116binaries.
117
118
119===============================================================================
120Building in a GNU environment
121===============================================================================
122
123FLAC uses autoconf and libtool for configuring and building.
124Better documentation for these will be forthcoming, but in
125general, this should work:
126
127./configure && make && make check && make install
128
129The 'make check' step is optional; omit it to skip all the tests,
130which can take several hours and use around 70-80 megs of disk space.
131Even though it will stop with an explicit message on any failure, it
132does print out a lot of stuff so you might want to capture the output
133to a file if you're having a problem. Also, don't run 'make check'
134as root because it confuses some of the tests.
135
136NOTE: Despite our best efforts it's entirely possible to have
137problems when using older versions of autoconf, automake, or
138libtool. If you have the latest versions and still can't get it
139to work, see the next section on Makefile.lite.
140
141There are a few FLAC-specific arguments you can give to
142`configure':
143
144--enable-debug : Builds everything with debug symbols and some
145extra (and more verbose) error checking.
146
147--disable-asm-optimizations : Disables the compilation of the
148assembly routines. Many routines have assembly versions for
149speed and `configure' is pretty good about knowing what is
150supported, but you can use this option to build only from the
151C sources. May be necessary for building on OS X (Intel)
152
153--enable-sse : If you are building for an x86 CPU that supports
154SSE instructions, you can enable some of the faster routines
155if your operating system also supports SSE instructions. flac
156can tell if the CPU supports the instructions but currently has
157no way to test if the OS does, so if it does, you must pass
158this argument to configure to use the SSE routines. If flac
159crashes when built with this option you will have to go back and
160configure without --enable-sse. Note that
161--disable-asm-optimizations implies --disable-sse.
162
163--enable-local-xmms-plugin : Installs the FLAC XMMS plugin in
164$HOME/.xmms/Plugins, instead of the global XMMS plugin area
165(usually /usr/lib/xmms/Input).
166
167--with-ogg=
168--with-xmms-prefix=
169--with-libiconv-prefix=
170Use these if you have these packages but configure can't find them.
171
172If you want to build completely from scratch (i.e. starting with just
173configure.in and Makefile.am) you should be able to just run 'autogen.sh'
174but make sure and read the comments in that file first.
175
176
177===============================================================================
178Building with Makefile.lite
179===============================================================================
180
181There is a more lightweight build system for do-it-yourself-ers.
182It is also useful if configure isn't working, which may be the
183case since lately we've had some problems with different versions
184of automake and libtool. The Makefile.lite system should work
185on GNU systems with few or no adjustments.
186
187From the top level just 'make -f Makefile.lite'. You can
188specify zero or one optional target from 'release', 'debug',
189'test', or 'clean'. The default is 'release'. There is no
190'install' target but everything you need will end up in the
191obj/ directory.
192
193If you are not on an x86 system or you don't have nasm, you
194may have to change the DEFINES in src/libFLAC/Makefile.lite. If
195you don't have nasm, remove -DFLAC__HAS_NASM. If your target is
196not an x86, change -DFLAC__CPU_IA32 to -DFLAC__CPU_UNKNOWN.
197
198
199===============================================================================
200Building with MSVC
201===============================================================================
202
203There are .dsp projects and a master FLAC.dsw workspace to build all
204the libraries and executables with MSVC6. There are also .vcproj
205projects and a master FLAC.sln solution to build all the libraries and
206executables with VC++ 2005.
207
208Prerequisite: you must have the Ogg libraries installed as described
209later.
210
211Prerequisite: you must have nasm installed, and nasmw.exe must be in
212your PATH, or the path to nasmw.exe must be added to the list of
213directories for executable files in the MSVC global options.
214
215MSVC6:
216To build everything, run Developer Studio, do File|Open Workspace,
217and open FLAC.dsw. Select "Build | Set active configuration..."
218from the menu, then in the dialog, select "All - Win32 Release" (or
219Debug if you prefer). Click "Ok" then hit F7 to build.
220
221VC++ 2005:
222To build everything, run Visual Studio, do File|Open and open FLAC.sln.
223From the dropdown in the toolbar, select "Release" instead of "Debug",
224then hit F7 to build.
225
226Either way, this will build all libraries both statically (e.g.
227obj\release\lib\libFLAC_static.lib) and as DLLs (e.g.
228obj\release\lib\libFLAC.dll), and it will build all binaries, statically
229linked (e.g. obj\release\bin\flac.exe).
230
231Everything will end up in the "obj" directory. DLLs and .exe files
232are all that are needed and can be copied to an installation area and
233added to the PATH. The plugins have to be copied to their appropriate
234place in the player area. For Winamp2 this is <winamp2-dir>\Plugins.
235
236By default the code is configured with Ogg support. Before building FLAC
237you will need to get the Ogg source distribution
238(see http://xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/download/), build ogg_static.lib (load and
239build win32\ogg_static.dsp), copy ogg_static.lib into FLAC's
240'obj\release\lib' directory, and copy the entire include\ogg tree into
241FLAC's 'include' directory (so that there is an 'ogg' directory in FLAC's
242'include' directory with the files ogg.h, os_types.h and config_types.h).
243
244If you want to build without Ogg support, instead edit all .dsp or
245.vcproj files and remove any occurrences of "/D FLAC__HAS_OGG".
246
247
248===============================================================================
249Building on Mac OS X
250===============================================================================
251
252If you have Fink or a recent version of OS X with the proper autotooles,
253the GNU flow above should work. The Project Builder project has been
254deprecated but we are working on replacing it with an Xcode equivalent.
255