1 /* FLAC - Free Lossless Audio Codec
2 * Copyright (C) 2001,2002,2003 Josh Coalson
4 * This program is part of FLAC; you can redistribute it and/or
5 * modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
6 * as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
7 * of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
9 * This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
10 * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
11 * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
12 * GNU General Public License for more details.
14 * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
15 * along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
16 * Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
20 FLAC (http://flac.sourceforge.net/) is an Open Source lossless audio
21 codec developed by Josh Coalson.
24 * `libFLAC', a library which implements reference encoders and
25 decoders, and a metadata interface
26 * `libFLAC++', a C++ object wrapper library around libFLAC
27 * `libOggFLAC' and `libOggFLAC++', which provide encoders and
28 decoders for FLAC streams in an Ogg container
29 * `flac', a command-line program for encoding and decoding files
30 * `metaflac', a command-line program for editing FLAC metadata
31 * player plugins for XMMS and Winamp
32 * user and API documentation
34 The libraries (libFLAC, libFLAC++, libOggFLAC, and libOggFLAC++) are
35 licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL). All other
36 programs and plugins are licensed under the GNU General Public License
37 (GPL). The documentation is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation
41 ===============================================================================
42 FLAC - 1.0.4 - Contents
43 ===============================================================================
46 - Building in a GNU environment
47 - Building with Makefile.lite
49 - Building on Mac OS X
50 - Note to embedded developers
53 ===============================================================================
55 ===============================================================================
57 This is the source release for the FLAC project. See
61 for full documentation.
63 A brief description of the directory tree:
65 doc/ the HTML documentation
66 flac.pbproj/ the Mac OS X Project Builder project
67 include/ public include files for libFLAC and libFLAC++
68 man/ the man page for `flac'
69 src/ the source code and private headers
70 test/ the test scripts
73 ===============================================================================
74 Building in a GNU environment
75 ===============================================================================
77 FLAC uses autoconf and libtool for configuring and building.
78 Better documentation for these will be forthcoming, but in
79 general, this should work:
81 ./configure && make && make check && make install
83 The 'make check' step is optional; omit it to skip all the tests,
84 which can take several hours and use around 70-80 megs of disk space.
86 NOTE: Despite our best efforts it's entirely possible to have
87 problems when using older versions of autoconf, automake, or
88 libtool. If you have the latest versions and still can't get it
89 to work, see the next section on Makefile.lite.
91 There are a few FLAC-specific arguments you can give to
94 --enable-debug : Builds everything with debug symbols and some
95 extra (and more verbose) error checking.
97 --disable-asm-optimizations : Disables the compilation of the
98 assembly routines. Many routines have assembly versions for
99 speed and `configure' is pretty good about knowing what is
100 supported, but you can use this option to build only from the
103 --enable-sse : If you are building for an x86 CPU that supports
104 SSE instructions, you can enable some of the faster routines
105 if your operating system also supports SSE instructions. flac
106 can tell if the CPU supports the instructions but currently has
107 no way to test if the OS does, so if it does, you must pass
108 this argument to configure to use the SSE routines. If flac
109 crashes when built with this option you will have to go back and
110 configure without --enable-sse. Note that
111 --disable-asm-optimizations implies --disable-sse.
113 --enable-3dnow : If you are building for an AMD CPU which has 3DNOW!
114 support, you can use this flag to enable some assembly routines
115 which use 3DNOW! instructions. There have been some reports that
116 they may cause flac to crash, which is why it is not turned on
117 by default. Note that --disable-asm-optimizations overrides
123 --with-libiconv-prefix=
124 Use these if you have these packages but configure can't find them.
126 If you want to build completely from scratch (i.e. starting with just
127 configure.in and Makefile.am) you should be able to just run 'autogen.sh'
128 but make sure and read the comments in that file first.
131 ===============================================================================
132 Building with Makefile.lite
133 ===============================================================================
135 There is a more lightweight build system for do-it-yourself-ers.
136 It is also useful if configure isn't working, which may be the
137 case since lately we've had some problems with different versions
138 of automake and libtool. The Makefile.lite system should work
139 on GNU systems with few or no adjustments.
141 From the top level just 'make -f Makefile.lite'. You can
142 specify zero or one optional target from 'release', 'debug',
143 'test', or 'clean'. The default is 'release'. There is no
144 'install' target but everything you need will end up in the
147 If you are not on an x86 system or you don't have nasm, you
148 may have to change the DEFINES in src/libFLAC/Makefile.lite. If
149 you don't have nasm, remove -DFLAC__HAS_NASM. If your target is
150 not an x86, change -DFLAC__CPU_IA32 to -DFLAC__CPU_UNKNOWN.
153 ===============================================================================
155 ===============================================================================
157 There are two ways to build with MSVC:
161 Prerequisite: you must have the Ogg libraries installed as described
164 Prerequisite: you must have nasm installed, and have the environment
165 variable FLAC_NASM set to the full path to nasmw.exe, e.g
169 To build everything, run Developer Studio, do File|Open Workspace,
170 and open FLAC.dsw. Switch to the 'Files' tab, select 'all files'
171 from the tree, do right-mouse-button and 'Set as active project'.
172 The default build mode will probably be Debug; to change to release
173 do Build|Set Active Configuration and select 'all - Win32 Release'.
174 Then do Project|Build. This will build all libraries both statically
175 (e.g. obj\debug\lib\libFLAC_static.lib) and as DLLs (e.g.
176 obj\debug\bin\libFLAC.dll), and it will build all binaries, statically
177 linked (e.g. obj\debug\bin\flac.exe).
181 Prerequisite: you must have the Ogg libraries installed as described
184 Prerequisite: you must have nasm installed and nasmw.exe must be in
187 To build everything, open a Command window, cd to the top-level
188 directory (where this README is) and do
192 This will recur into all the source directories in the right order
193 and build everything. The libraries will be build only as static
194 libs. You need only to install the binaries. To clean up everything
197 nmake /f Makefile.vc clean
199 from the top level directory, or any directory which has a
202 Everything will end up in the 'obj' directory. DLLs and .exe files
203 are all that are needed and can be copied to an installation area and
204 added to the PATH. The plugins have to be copied to their appropriate
205 place in the player area. For Winamp2 this is <winamp2-dir>\Plugins
206 and for Winamp3 this is <winamp3-dir>\Wacs.
208 By default the code is configured with Ogg support. Before building FLAC
209 you will need to get the Ogg source distribution
210 (see http://xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/download/), build ogg_static.lib (load and
211 build win32\ogg_static.dsp), copy ogg_static.lib into FLAC's
212 'obj\release\lib' directory, and copy the entire include\ogg tree into
213 FLAC's 'include' directory (so that there is an 'ogg' directory in FLAC's
214 'include' directory with the files ogg.h, os_types.h and config_types.h).
217 ===============================================================================
219 ===============================================================================
221 If you have Fink, the GNU flow above should work. Otherwise,
222 there is a Project Builder project in the top-level source
223 directory to build libFLAC and the command-line utilities on
224 Mac OS X. In a terminal, cd to the top-level directory (the
225 one that contains this README file) and type:
229 This will create everything and leave it in the build/ directory.
230 Don't worry about the rest of the stuff that is in build/ or
231 the stuff that was already there before building.
233 There currently is no install procedure; you will have to
234 manually copy the tools to wherever you need them.
237 ===============================================================================
238 Note to embedded developers
239 ===============================================================================
241 libFLAC has grown larger over time as more functionality has been
242 included, but much of it may be unnecessary for a particular embedded
243 implementation. Unused parts may be pruned by some simple editing of
244 configure.in and src/libFLAC/Makefile.am; the following dependency
245 graph shows which modules may be pruned without breaking things
253 seekable_stream_decoder.h
260 There is a section dedicated to embedded use in the libFLAC API
261 HTML documentation (see doc/html/api/index.html).