Csound GBS Manual

Csound GBS Manual

Copyright © 2004 John D. Ramsdell.

Permission to copy without fee all or part of this material is granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for direct commercial advantage, this copyright notice and the title of the publication and its date appear, and notice in given that copying is by permission of John D. Ramsdell.

• Introduction: What is Csound GBS?
• Csound API: How to make use of the Csound API

Introduction

This manual describes a version of Csound distributed with a GNU Build System (GBS). The GBS distribution is configured and built using the usual commands:

     ./configure
     make
     make install
     

By default, no shared libraries are build, however, the system can be configured to do so. This may be of particular interest to Cygwin Windows users interested in building a Csound DLL that does not require the presence of the Cygwin DLL. To build a Csound DLL in Cygwin, configure with:

     ./configure --enable-shared=yes --enable-cygwin=no
     

Csound configuration options are listed as follows:

     ./configure --help
     

Building Applications Using the Csound API

The GBS distribution builds and installs programs, libraries, and headers. One library provides the Csound API. After installation, the GBS distribution makes the Csound API header available to C and C++ programs with:

     #include <csound/csound.h>
     

The program csound-config prints the compiler options required to build and link programs that use the Csound API. For small applications, the easiest way to use this programs is to start your project's Makefile with the following:

     CFLAGS=`csound-config --cflags`
     CXXFLAGS=`csound-config --cxxflags`
     LDFLAGS=`csound-config --ldflags`
     LDLIBS=`csound-config --libs`
     

Projects that use autoconf can make use of the csound-config program by including the following text in its configure.ac:

     AC_ARG_VAR([CSOUND_CONFIG],
     	   [Path to the Csound configuration script when available])
     AC_PATH_PROG([CSOUND_CONFIG], [csound-config])
     
     if test -n "$CSOUND_CONFIG"; then
       CFLAGS="$CFLAGS `$CSOUND_CONFIG --cflags`"
       CXXFLAGS="$CXXFLAGS `$CSOUND_CONFIG --cxxflags`"
       LDFLAGS="$LDFLAGS `$CSOUND_CONFIG --ldflags`"
       LIBS="$LIBS `$CSOUND_CONFIG --static --libs`"
     else
       AC_MSG_ERROR(cannot find Csound package)
     fi
     

Note that the author of this configure.ac specified that the Csound library be statically linked into their program even if a shared version of the library is available.

The csound-config program can be used even when the GBS distribution is not installed. The --inplace option will print the appropriate compiler options for a version of Csound built within the source directories.

The complete set of options supported by csound-config follow:

     $ csound-config --help
     Usage: csound-config [options]
     Options:
       --prefix[=DIR]        Show or set the prefix
       --exec-prefix[=DIR]   Show or set the exec-prefix
       --basename            Show the package base name
       --version             Show the version
       --cflags              Show the flags to compile C with Csound
       --cxxflags            Show the flags to compile C++ with Csound
       --ldflags             Show the flags to link with Csound
       --libs                Show the library flags to link with Csound
       --static              When displaying libraries, show the static ones
       --cc                  Show C compiler used to build Csound
       --cxx                 Show C++ compiler used to build Csound
       --inplace             Use the build directory instead the install directories