## Building Pipewire uses the Meson and Ninja build system to compile. You can run it with: ``` $ meson build $ cd build $ ninja ``` You can see the available meson options in `meson_options.txt` file. If you're not familiar with these tools, the included `autogen.sh` script will automatically run the correct `meson`/`ninja` commands, and output a Makefile. It follows that there are two methods to build Pipewire, however both rely on Meson and Ninja to actually perform the compilation: ``` $ ./autogen.sh $ make ``` Provide the installation directory with the --prefix option. ## Running If you want to run PipeWire without installing it on your system, there is a script that you can run. This puts you in an environment in which PipeWire can be run from the build directory, and ALSA, PulseAudio and JACK applications will use the PipeWire emulation libraries automatically in this environment. You can get into this environment with: ``` $ ./pw-uninstalled.sh ``` In most cases you would want to run the default pipewire daemon. Look below for how to make this daemon start automatically using systemd. If you want to run pipewire from the build directory, you can do this by doing: ``` make run ``` This will use the default config file to configure and start the daemon. The default config will also start pipewire-media-session, a default example media session. You can also enable more debuging with the PIPEWIRE_DEBUG environment variable like so: ``` PIPEWIRE_DEBUG=4 make run ``` You might have to stop the pipewire service/socket that might have been started already, with: ``` systemctl --user stop pipewire.service systemctl --user stop pipewire.socket ``` ## Installing PipeWire comes with quite a bit of libraries and tools, use: ``` sudo meson install ``` to install everything onto the system into the specified prefix. Some additional steps will have to be performed to integrate with the distribution as shown below. ### PipeWire daemon A correctly installed PipeWire system should have a pipewire process and a pipewire-media-session (or alternative) process running. PipeWire is usually started as a systemd unit using socket activation or as a service. Configuration of the PipeWire daemon can be found in /etc/pipewire/pipewire.conf. Please refer to the comments in the config file for more information about the configuration options. ### ALSA plugin The ALSA plugin is usually installed in: ``` /usr/lib64/alsa-lib/libasound_module_pcm_pipewire.so ``` There is also a config file installed in: ``` /usr/share/alsa/alsa.conf.d/50-pipewire.conf ``` The plugin will be picked up by alsa when the following files are in /etc/alsa/conf.d/ ``` /etc/alsa/conf.d/50-pipewire.conf -> /usr/share/alsa/alsa.conf.d/50-pipewire.conf /etc/alsa/conf.d/99-pipewire-default.conf ``` With this setup, aplay -l should list a pipewire: device that can be used as a regular alsa device for playback and record. ### JACK emulation PipeWire reimplements the 3 libraries that JACK applications use to make them run on top of PipeWire. These libraries are found here: ``` /usr/lib64/pipewire-0.3/jack/libjacknet.so -> libjacknet.so.0 /usr/lib64/pipewire-0.3/jack/libjacknet.so.0 -> libjacknet.so.0.304.0 /usr/lib64/pipewire-0.3/jack/libjacknet.so.0.304.0 /usr/lib64/pipewire-0.3/jack/libjackserver.so -> libjackserver.so.0 /usr/lib64/pipewire-0.3/jack/libjackserver.so.0 -> libjackserver.so.0.304.0 /usr/lib64/pipewire-0.3/jack/libjackserver.so.0.304.0 /usr/lib64/pipewire-0.3/jack/libjack.so -> libjack.so.0 /usr/lib64/pipewire-0.3/jack/libjack.so.0 -> libjack.so.0.304.0 /usr/lib64/pipewire-0.3/jack/libjack.so.0.304.0 ``` The provides pw-jack script uses LD_LIBRARY_PATH to set the library search path to these replacement libraries. This allows you to run jack apps on both the real JACK server or on PipeWire with the script. It is also possible to completely replace the JACK libraries by making a symlink in /usr/lib64/ as follows: ``` /usr/lib64/libjacknet.so -> libjacknet.so.0.1.0 /usr/lib64/libjacknet.so.0 -> libjacknet.so.0.1.0 /usr/lib64/libjacknet.so.0.1.0 -> pipewire-0.3/jack/libjacknet.so.0 /usr/lib64/libjackserver.so -> libjackserver.so.0.1.0 /usr/lib64/libjackserver.so.0 -> libjackserver.so.0.1.0 /usr/lib64/libjackserver.so.0.1.0 -> pipewire-0.3/jack/libjackserver.so.0 /usr/lib64/libjack.so -> libjack.so.0.1.0 /usr/lib64/libjack.so.0 -> libjack.so.0.1.0 /usr/lib64/libjack.so.0.1.0 -> pipewire-0.3/jack/libjack.so.0 ``` Note that when JACK is replaced by PipeWire, the SPA JACK plugin (installed in /usr/lib64/spa-0.2/jack/libspa-jack.so) is not useful anymore and distributions should make them conflict. ### PulseAudio emulation PipeWire reimplements the 3 libraries that PulseAudio applications use to make them run on top of PipeWire. These libraries are found here: ``` /usr/lib64/pipewire-0.3/pulse/libpulse-mainloop-glib.so -> libpulse-mainloop-glib.so.0 /usr/lib64/pipewire-0.3/pulse/libpulse-mainloop-glib.so.0 -> libpulse-mainloop-glib.so.0.304.0 /usr/lib64/pipewire-0.3/pulse/libpulse-mainloop-glib.so.0.304.0 /usr/lib64/pipewire-0.3/pulse/libpulse-simple.so -> libpulse-simple.so.0 /usr/lib64/pipewire-0.3/pulse/libpulse-simple.so.0 -> libpulse-simple.so.0.304.0 /usr/lib64/pipewire-0.3/pulse/libpulse-simple.so.0.304.0 /usr/lib64/pipewire-0.3/pulse/libpulse.so -> libpulse.so.0 /usr/lib64/pipewire-0.3/pulse/libpulse.so.0 -> libpulse.so.0.304.0 /usr/lib64/pipewire-0.3/pulse/libpulse.so.0.304.0 ``` The provides pw-pulse script uses LD_LIBRARY_PATH to set the library search path to these replacement libraries. This allows you to run PulseAudio apps on both the real PulseAudio server or on PipeWire with the script. To replace the pulseaudio libraries completely symlinks need to be made in /usr/lib64 like this: ``` /usr/lib64/libpulse-mainloop-glib.so -> libpulse-mainloop-glib.so.0 /usr/lib64/libpulse-mainloop-glib.so.0 -> pipewire-0.3/pulse/libpulse-mainloop-glib.so.0.304.0 /usr/lib64/libpulse-simple.so -> libpulse-simple.so.0 /usr/lib64/libpulse-simple.so.0 -> pipewire-0.3/pulse/libpulse-simple.so.0.304.0 /usr/lib64/libpulse.so -> libpulse.so.0 /usr/lib64/libpulse.so.0 -> pipewire-0.3/pulse/libpulse.so.0.304.0 ```