Audacity for Solaris 10 x86

So both Dan Price and Ben Rockwood have asked again and again and again for Audacity, a free audio editor, to be ported to Solaris. A reasonable challenge. After a bit of fiddling and some decisions, I have a functional version of Audacity 1.2.3. Whether or not this will result in me issuing podcasts, mixes, or mashups is presently unknown, but decreasingly likely in that order.

This build does not have input support for MP3 or Ogg. You will have to use tools like sox or oggdec to convert those formats to WAV. Outputs to those formats should work, but I’ve mostly been testing with Ogg.

I thought I had notes on the port, but I can’t find them. So, from memory, here’s the rough idea:

  • Use blastwave.org for pre-packaged libaries where possible.
  • Use g++ because Audacity seems to use specific features of this C++ implementation.
  • Build your own Motif wxwidgets library using g++, because there isn’t a common C++ ABI on Solaris.
  • Drop in the Solaris-specific pieces from a recent version of the PortAudio library, use that as the primary sound option, and make a few edits for header file issues.
  • Get the run paths right. Sorry for the implicit lameness; depending on feedback, maybe I can retrace my steps more precisely.

Download

Please don’t decoralize the link, or I’ll have to take the binary down.

Installation

This build of Audacity 1.2.3 relies on you using blastwave.org for a collection of libraries. I assume you have a working version of pkg-get.

  1. Get required libraries.
    # pkg-get -i libvorbis libogg libmad libid3tag gcc3corert gcc3g++rt
    
    You may also want
`lame`, `sox`, and `vorbistools` for audio transcoding. 
  1. Download package.
  2. Uncompress and install.
    # gunzip SLUGaudacity.pkg.gz

pkgadd -d SLUGaudacity.pkg

[Interactive questions. The dependencies against the Blastwave packages will be checked.]

  1. Audacity is now installed as /opt/SLUGaudacity/bin/audacity. You will probably want to make a symbolic link from a more usual place in your path.

Have fun!

[ T: OpenSolaris Solaris Audacity Blastwave ]