Happy birthday Audacity: 20 years

Here is a next update for my ‘Digital Audio Workstation’ (DAW) software collection.

Today, 28th of May 2020, the Audacity multi-track audio recorder turns 20 years old! This is a nice moment to also release the Slackware packages (only targeting -current, sorry) for their latest and greatest, Audacity 2.4.1 which was released a week ago as a quick bug-fix to the long-awaited 2.4.0.

Along with this new Audacity release, I also have new packages for wxGTK3 (3.0.5.1) which you’ll need for Audacity to show its graphical user interface:

Get the packages here and note that you will also need to install jack2, ladspa_sdk and vamp-plugin-sdk packages: http://www.slackware.com/~alien/slackbuilds/(rsync://slackware.nl/mirrors/people/alien/slackbuilds/)

Have fun! Eric

18 thoughts on “Happy birthday Audacity: 20 years


  1. Pingback: Links 28/5/2020: OpenSSH 8.3, New Mesa Release, Raspberry Pi 4 News, Fedora 32 Elections | Techrights


  2. Just noted the following in the changelog:
    “wxGTK3: updated to 3.0.5.1. Also added gtk2 components.”
    Does this mean that your wxGTK-2.8.12 package is no longer needed, provided that one has upgraded to your new wxGTK3 package?
    I’m pretty sure that I have some program built from SBo installed that requires wxGTK2, even if I can’t remember which one right now.


    1. There’s a version jump for wxWidgets from 2.8 to 3.0 which you’ll see reflected in directory names and library ‘.so’ versions, so I do not think that wxGTK3 this is a drop-in replacement for wxGTK.
      What you could try though is trying to recompile your programs and adding lines to your SlackBuild script.

      Like: export WX_CONFIG=”/usr/bin/wx-config-gtk2″ in the environment.
      And if the cmake/configure needs it, point them to the config executable “/usr/bin/wx-config-gtk2” and/or the wxrc executable “/usr/bin/wxrc-3.0” by setting appropriate parameters (check ccmake or configure outputs).


  3. Hmm, seems as if the new wxGTK3-3.0.5.1 package is built with static libraries?
    Filezilla, for instance, gives the error message “error while loading shared libraries: libwx_gtk2u_aui-3.0.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory” and yes – /usr/lib64 does not contain libwx_gtk2u_aui-3.0.so.0 but libwx_gtk2u_aui-3.0.a


    1. Yes, like the older wxGTK3 package, it does not contain shared libraries.
      That was not intentional… audacity uses the static libraries so that it does not depend on a separate wxGTK3 package at runtime.
      I will recompile the wxGTK package at some point, changing “–disable-shared” to “–enable-shared –enable-static”.


  4. Odd, I was convinced that my previous wxGTK3 package was yours as well. But since filezilla worked before the upgrade it must have been a SBo build.
    Recompiled wxGTK3 after editing your buildscript with your suggested changes and all is well, thanks!


  5. Hello, Eric.

    Could you remove the line “export MANPATH=”${MANPATH}:${JAVA_HOME}/man”

    from the slackbuild for OpenJDK8

    /var/log/packages/openjdk-8u252_b09-x86_64-1alien:27:etc/profile.d/openjdk.sh
    ?

    It is not really useful there. It confuses xman, and is already covered by /etc/man_db.conf separately.

    Thank you.


    1. Nice try, but I build the package for several Slackware releases and there are people using Java on older versions of Slackware than -current. I do not have a /etc/man_db.conf here and xman is perfectly happy showing me the java related man pages.


  6. Noticed that audacity-2.4.2 has been released. Juat a few minor changes/bugfixes so maybe not worth spending time to compile, since:
    1) compiling now needs wxGTK3-3.1.3
    2) it seems as if building with “configure” no longer works, cmake is the only option


    1. I’ll upload audacity-2.4.2 today, using cmake and an internal version of wxWidgets 3.1.3.
      I could not fix the compilation of the internal libsoxr on 32bit so I had to add a separate soxr package and link against that.


  7. Thanks, Eric, you made my day! Had planned to compile wxWidgets (after realising that a mere wxGTK3 upgrade wasn’t enough) and then try to compile the new audacity version. I much prefer your solution adding wxWidgets as an internal part of the package.
    Lost my excuse for postponing mowing the lawn, but that’s a small price to pay…


  8. Audacity-3.0.0 has been released. I tried compiling using your buildscript with the wxWidget, but it seems as buildscript changes are required (no /tmp/build/package-audacity/usr/lib64 directory created).
    Not that the changelog mentions dramatic improvements, but of course an upgrade would be appreciated when you can find the time!




  9. I also tried just changing the version number in the build script.
    before the latest packages were uploaded, tho I’m on 14.2 anyway.
    In the src_checkout function the line
    && cd ${PBASE} \
    should read
    && cd ${PBASE}
    i.e no line continuation, after this change all works as expected.




  10. I forgot to add that I’m referring to Audacity 3.0 64bit edition.
    soxr is mentioned as a dependency only for 32bit in the changelog.


    1. I think I inadvertently re-introduced external soxr dependency… sorry for that.
      If audacity is built without soxr present already, it will use its own internal version of that code. I must have had soxr installed by my “install all deps in one line” script for audacity in the VM.



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