Installing SuperCollider on Fedora

SuperCollider is not available within the official Fedora repositories. There are two ways to install SuperCollider: using the Stanford Planet CCRMA repo or building it from source.

Install via Planet CCRMA

Please see the Planet CCRMA website for instructions on how to add this repository to your system. The SuperCollider packages available in this repository can be installed using dnf install.

Building from source

SuperCollider's Linux Readme has all the information you need to build SuperCollider from source. The following should help you install the required dependencies and build SuperCollider on a recent Fedora system.

Installing dependencies

The following packages are required and are available in the Fedora repositories.

• gcc
• gcc-c++
• cmake
• make
• git
• alsa-lib-devel
• jack-audio-connection-kit-devel
• libsndfile-devel
• ncurses-devel
• fftw-devel
• libXt-devel (note capital 'X')
• libX11-devel
• boost-devel
• systemd-devel (provides libudev.h)
• libatomic
• avahi-devel
• readline-devel
• qt5-qtlocation-devel
• qt5-qtsensors-devel
• qt5-qttools-devel
• qt5-qtwebengine-devel
• qt5-qtwebsockets-devel
• qt5-qtsvg-devel

The following packages are optional:

• emacs
• qjackctl
• ccache

The required and optional packages listed above may be installed with the following command;

  $ sudo dnf install gcc gcc-c++ cmake make git jack-audio-connection-kit-devel     \
    libsndfile-devel fftw-devel libXt-devel libX11-devel boost-devel alsa-lib-devel \
    systemd-devel libatomic avahi-devel qt5-qtlocation-devel qt5-qtsensors-devel    \
    readline-devel qt5-qtwebengine-devel qt5-qttools-devel ncurses-devel            \
    qt5-qtwebsockets-devel qt5-qtsvg-devel emacs qjackctl ccache

A note about JACK

You may have issues running JACK with real time scheduling privileges on Fedora. The following should allow you to run JACK in Realtime mode.

First, be sure to add your user to the jackuser group:

  $ sudo usermod -a -G jackuser YOUR_USERNAME

Second, comment out the section that relates to the pulse-rt group in /etc/security/limits.d/95-jack.conf. The config file should like something like this:

  $ cat /etc/security/limits.d/95-jack.conf

  # Default limits for users of jack-audio-connection-kit

  @jackuser - rtprio 80
  @jackuser - memlock unlimited 

  # @pulse-rt - rtprio 20
  # @pulse-rt - nice -20

Restart your computer after completing the above.

Getting the SuperCollider source code

Simply clone the SuperCollider git repository to a sensible location on your system:

  $ git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/supercollider/supercollider.git

With the --recurse-submodules flag, the repository's submodules will also be cloned.

Once the cloning is finished, there should be a new folder called supercollider containing the source code. Navigate into this folder to proceed with the build.

If you cloned the SuperCollider repository without the --recurse-submodules flag, you will need to manually initialise and update the submodules. From within the supercollider source directory, run the following:

  $ git submodule update --init

Running cmake

Create a directory inside the supercollider folder called build and move into it:

  $ mkdir build && cd build

From within supercollider/build, run the following:

  $ cmake  ..

(Notice the space between cmake and the dots.)

Running the following will post a list of all available flags that can be set in order to configure your build.

  $ cmake -L ..

For example, if you wish to build SuperCollider without emacs support, run:

  $ cmake -DSC_EL=OFF ..

For a release type build, run:

  $ cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ..

For a native build, run:

  $ cmake -DNATIVE=ON ..

It's possible to set multiple flags at once like so:

  $ cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DNATIVE=ON -DSC_EL=OFF ..

Building and Installing

Use the following commands to build and install SuperCollider:

  $ make
  $ sudo make install

If your CPU has multiple cores, you can take advantage of make's -j option. For example, a CPU containing 4 cores can run:

  $ make -j4
  $ sudo make install

If building SuperCollider for the first time, run:

  $ sudo ldconfig

Uninstalling SuperCollider

From within you supercollider/build folder, run the following:

  $ sudo make uninstall

Installing the sc3-plugins

The sc3-plugins are an optional set of extension plugins for the SuperCollider3 audio synthesis server. These third-party plugins provide additional synthesis, analysis, and other capabilities for the sound server.

Please note that these UGens are, on average, less stable and well-maintained than the core collection included with SuperCollider. Use at your own risk!

Note: Extensions for the SuperCollider programming language are different. They are collected within the Quarks packaging system included in SuperCollider.

Getting the source code for the sc3-plugins

Simply clone the sc3-plugins git repository to a sensible location on your system:

  $ git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/supercollider/sc3-plugins.git

With the --recurse-submodules flag, the repository's submodules will also be cloned.

Cloning the repository will create a folder called sc3-plugins containing the source code.

If you cloned the sc3-plugins repository without the --recurse-submodules flag, you will need to manually initialise and update the submodules. From within sc3-plugins, run the following:

  $ git submodule update --init

Running cmake

Create a directory inside the sc3-plugins folder called build and move to it:

  $ mkdir build && cd build

From within sc3-plugins/build, run the following command, replacing /path/to/your/supercollider/source with the path to the SuperCollider source code on your system:

  $ cmake -DSC_PATH=/path/to/your/supercollider/source ..

Running the following will post a list of all available flags that can be set in order to configure your build.

  $ cmake -L ..

It's a good idea to set the cmake flags CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE and NATIVE to the same values that where used when building SuperCollider. In the end, your cmake configuration command might look something like this:

  $ cmake -DSC_PATH=/path/to/your/supercollider/source -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DNATIVE=ON ..

Finally, building the plugins

From within sc3-plugins/build, run the following:

  $ make
  $ sudo make install

If your CPU has multiple cores, you can take advantage of make's -j option. For example, a CPU containing 4 cores can run:

  $ make -j4
  $ sudo make install

If building the sc3-plugins for the first time, run:

  $ sudo ldconfig

Checking the installation worked

If you have the IDE open, close it. Now open it again and boot the server.

Enter the following into the blank text window and run it:

  {VOSIM.ar(Impulse.ar(100), 500, 3, 0.99)}.play

You should hear a buzzing sound. If you don't, double check and attempt the instructions again.

Uninstalling the sc3-plugins

To uninstall the sc3-plugins, from the sc3-plugins/build directory, run the following:

  $ sudo make uninstall

Getting help

If you don't have any luck with the above instructions, feel free to ask for help on the SuperCollider Slack, or the SuperCollider Forum.