1/* FLAC - Free Lossless Audio Codec
2 * Copyright (C) 2001-2009 Josh Coalson
3 * Copyright (C) 2011-2016 Xiph.Org Foundation
4 *
5 * This file is part the FLAC project. FLAC is comprised of several
6 * components distributed under different licenses. The codec libraries
7 * are distributed under Xiph.Org's BSD-like license (see the file
8 * COPYING.Xiph in this distribution). All other programs, libraries, and
9 * plugins are distributed under the LGPL or GPL (see COPYING.LGPL and
10 * COPYING.GPL). The documentation is distributed under the Gnu FDL (see
11 * COPYING.FDL). Each file in the FLAC distribution contains at the top the
12 * terms under which it may be distributed.
13 *
14 * Since this particular file is relevant to all components of FLAC,
15 * it may be distributed under the Xiph.Org license, which is the least
16 * restrictive of those mentioned above. See the file COPYING.Xiph in this
17 * distribution.
18 */
19
20
21FLAC is an Open Source lossless audio codec developed by Josh Coalson from 2001
22to 2009.
23
24From January 2012 FLAC is being maintained by Erik de Castro Lopo under the
25auspices of the Xiph.org Foundation.
26
27FLAC is comprised of
28 * `libFLAC', a library which implements reference encoders and
29 decoders for native FLAC and Ogg FLAC, and a metadata interface
30 * `libFLAC++', a C++ object wrapper library around libFLAC
31 * `flac', a command-line program for encoding and decoding files
32 * `metaflac', a command-line program for viewing and editing FLAC
33 metadata
34 * player plugin for XMMS
35 * user and API documentation
36
37The libraries (libFLAC, libFLAC++) are
38licensed under Xiph.org's BSD-like license (see COPYING.Xiph). All other
39programs and plugins are licensed under the GNU General Public License
40(see COPYING.GPL). The documentation is licensed under the GNU Free
41Documentation License (see COPYING.FDL).
42
43
44===============================================================================
45FLAC - 1.3.2 - Contents
46===============================================================================
47
48- Introduction
49- Prerequisites
50- Note to embedded developers
51- Building in a GNU environment
52- Building with Makefile.lite
53- Building with MSVC
54- Building on Mac OS X
55
56
57===============================================================================
58Introduction
59===============================================================================
60
61This is the source release for the FLAC project. See
62
63 doc/html/index.html
64
65for full documentation.
66
67A brief description of the directory tree:
68
69 doc/ the HTML documentation
70 examples/ example programs demonstrating the use of libFLAC and libFLAC++
71 include/ public include files for libFLAC and libFLAC++
72 man/ the man pages for `flac' and `metaflac'
73 src/ the source code and private headers
74 test/ the test scripts
75
76If you have questions about building FLAC that this document does not answer,
77please submit them at the following tracker so this document can be improved:
78
79 https://sourceforge.net/p/flac/support-requests/
80
81
82===============================================================================
83Prerequisites
84===============================================================================
85
86To build FLAC with support for Ogg FLAC you must have built and installed
87libogg according to the specific instructions below. You must have
88libogg 1.1.2 or greater, or there will be seeking problems with Ogg FLAC.
89
90If you are building on x86 and want the assembly optimizations, you will
91need to have NASM >= 0.98.30 installed according to the specific instructions
92below.
93
94
95===============================================================================
96Note to embedded developers
97===============================================================================
98
99libFLAC has grown larger over time as more functionality has been
100included, but much of it may be unnecessary for a particular embedded
101implementation. Unused parts may be pruned by some simple editing of
102configure.ac and src/libFLAC/Makefile.am; the following dependency
103graph shows which modules may be pruned without breaking things
104further down:
105
106metadata.h
107 stream_decoder.h
108 format.h
109
110stream_encoder.h
111 stream_decoder.h
112 format.h
113
114stream_decoder.h
115 format.h
116
117In other words, for pure decoding applications, both the stream encoder
118and metadata editing interfaces can be safely removed.
119
120There is a section dedicated to embedded use in the libFLAC API
121HTML documentation (see doc/html/api/index.html).
122
123Also, there are several places in the libFLAC code with comments marked
124with "OPT:" where a #define can be changed to enable code that might be
125faster on a specific platform. Experimenting with these can yield faster
126binaries.
127
128
129===============================================================================
130Building in a GNU environment
131===============================================================================
132
133FLAC uses autoconf and libtool for configuring and building.
134Better documentation for these will be forthcoming, but in
135general, this should work:
136
137./configure && make && make check && make install
138
139The 'make check' step is optional; omit it to skip all the tests,
140which can take several hours and use around 70-80 megs of disk space.
141Even though it will stop with an explicit message on any failure, it
142does print out a lot of stuff so you might want to capture the output
143to a file if you're having a problem. Also, don't run 'make check'
144as root because it confuses some of the tests.
145
146NOTE: Despite our best efforts it's entirely possible to have
147problems when using older versions of autoconf, automake, or
148libtool. If you have the latest versions and still can't get it
149to work, see the next section on Makefile.lite.
150
151There are a few FLAC-specific arguments you can give to
152`configure':
153
154--enable-debug : Builds everything with debug symbols and some
155extra (and more verbose) error checking.
156
157--disable-asm-optimizations : Disables the compilation of the
158assembly routines. Many routines have assembly versions for
159speed and `configure' is pretty good about knowing what is
160supported, but you can use this option to build only from the
161C sources. May be necessary for building on OS X (Intel).
162
163--enable-sse : If you are building for an x86 CPU that supports
164SSE instructions, you can enable some of the faster routines
165if your operating system also supports SSE instructions. flac
166can tell if the CPU supports the instructions but currently has
167no way to test if the OS does, so if it does, you must pass
168this argument to configure to use the SSE routines. If flac
169crashes when built with this option you will have to go back and
170configure without --enable-sse. Note that
171--disable-asm-optimizations implies --disable-sse.
172
173--enable-local-xmms-plugin : Installs the FLAC XMMS plugin in
174$HOME/.xmms/Plugins, instead of the global XMMS plugin area
175(usually /usr/lib/xmms/Input).
176
177--with-ogg=
178--with-xmms-prefix=
179--with-libiconv-prefix=
180Use these if you have these packages but configure can't find them.
181
182If you want to build completely from scratch (i.e. starting with just
183configure.ac and Makefile.am) you should be able to just run 'autogen.sh'
184but make sure and read the comments in that file first.
185
186
187===============================================================================
188Building with Makefile.lite
189===============================================================================
190
191There is a more lightweight build system for do-it-yourself-ers.
192It is also useful if configure isn't working, which may be the
193case since lately we've had some problems with different versions
194of automake and libtool. The Makefile.lite system should work
195on GNU systems with few or no adjustments.
196
197From the top level just 'make -f Makefile.lite'. You can
198specify zero or one optional target from 'release', 'debug',
199'test', or 'clean'. The default is 'release'. There is no
200'install' target but everything you need will end up in the
201obj/ directory.
202
203If you are not on an x86 system or you don't have nasm, you
204may have to change the DEFINES in src/libFLAC/Makefile.lite. If
205you don't have nasm, remove -DFLAC__HAS_NASM. If your target is
206not an x86, change -DFLAC__CPU_IA32 to -DFLAC__CPU_UNKNOWN.
207
208
209===============================================================================
210Building with MSVC
211===============================================================================
212
213There are .vcproj projects and a master FLAC.sln solution to build all
214the libraries and executables with MSVC 2005 or newer.
215
216Prerequisite: you must have the Ogg libraries installed as described
217later.
218
219Prerequisite: you must have nasm installed, and nasm.exe must be in
220your PATH, or the path to nasm.exe must be added to the list of
221directories for executable files in the MSVC global options.
222
223To build everything, run Visual Studio, do File|Open and open FLAC.sln.
224From the dropdown in the toolbar, select "Release" instead of "Debug",
225then do Build|Build Solution.
226
227This will build all libraries both statically (e.g.
228objs\release\lib\libFLAC_static.lib) and as DLLs (e.g.
229objs\release\lib\libFLAC.dll), and it will build all binaries, statically
230linked (e.g. objs\release\bin\flac.exe).
231
232Everything will end up in the "objs" directory. DLLs and .exe files
233are all that are needed and can be copied to an installation area and
234added to the PATH.
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/downloads/), build libogg_static.lib (load
239win32\libogg_static.sln, change solution configuration to "Release" and
240code generation to "Multi-threaded (/MT)", then build), copy libogg_static.lib
241into FLAC's 'objs\release\lib' directory, and copy the entire include\ogg tree
242into FLAC's 'include' directory (so that there is an 'ogg' directory in FLAC's
243'include' directory with the files ogg.h, os_types.h and config_types.h).
244
245If you want to build without Ogg support, instead edit all .vcproj files
246and remove any "FLAC__HAS_OGG" definitions.
247
248
249===============================================================================
250Building on Mac OS X
251===============================================================================
252
253If you have Fink or a recent version of OS X with the proper autotools,
254the GNU flow above should work.
255