I depend on the PPA’s for my programs.
On your previous advice (some time ago), I have your PPA:
http://ppa.launchpad.net/audacity-team/daily/ubuntu
However, it still has 2.0.2 on it. (Although, confusingly, the Help > About Audacity says “Audacity 2.0.4-alpha-Jan 22 2013”.)
Any idea when it will be updated to 2.0.3? Or am I using it already?
I use Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit.
Thank you.
This is the correct link for the PPA builds:
https://launchpad.net/~audacity-team/+archive/daily .
The PPA’s are produced by Ubuntu, not Audacity. The PPA’s use our latest HEAD development code Redirecting to: https://audacity.gitbook.io/dev .
From your description, you have (at the moment) the same code as HEAD, and at the moment that HEAD code is essentially the same as the Audacity 2.0.3 minsrc tarball release ( Redirecting to: https://www.audacityteam.org/download ).
The file name is probably “2.0.2+svn*” because the build is the Ubuntu 2.0.2 package with SVN modifications since then, but if you are concerned about it, please ask on the Ubuntu forums, not here.
HEAD now correctly shows 2.0.4 alpha because it is our development code. If you keep your PPA updated and use those updated versions, please bear in mind that these will depart considerably from 2.0.3 as new features or bug fixes are tried out. You should not use these updated versions for production work.
Another difference between the PPA and the tarball is that the PPA uses a slow but very high quality resampling library called “libsamplerate”. If you built the tarball and did not change the ./configure, you would get libsoxr instead of libsamplerate. Libsoxr is of comparable quality but very much faster. This is Ubuntu’s decision, although they plan to change to libsoxr with the next Audacity package.
I guess we advised you to use the PPA because you want the latest Audacity release before Ubuntu updates to it? But bear in mind as above that the PPA’s must be regarded as unstable except at the point immediately after an Audacity release. If preferred, compile the release tarball instead.
Gale
Thank you for your reply, Gale.
That is the same PPA, in fact.
Yes. Except for security updates, Canonical does not apply updates to packages for existing distributions. As I am using 12.04 LTS, it won’t be updated (for me) until the next LTS version, 14.04. I wanted the newer version of Audacity because one or two of the bugs were, well, bugging me.
Thank you for that warning. I have noted it. I would very much prefer to avoid compiling myself, as I am not experienced in that area. I would if I had to, but your daily PPA gives me a suitable alternative.
Your description has made it clear to me, so I know what to do:
Install from your daily PPA on the day of release, but never at any other time! Also ignore the stated release number 
Thank you again.
Yes, but please let me stress again that the PPA’s are produced by Ubuntu, not Audacity. Ubuntu may change anything to suit themselves.
Another difference in the Ubuntu PPA builds (and their packaged releases) of Audacity is that Ubuntu remove the Libraries Preferences, preferring to link in support for LAME and FFmpeg rather than load those libraries dynamically from the Preferences.
Gale
Thanks, Gale. Noted.
Things have changed a bit over the years. My recommendation now would be to build Audacity from the release version tarballs. These are currently on a roughly quarterly cycle. New releases are announced in various places including here on the forum and the main Audacity web site. You can also be notified by e-mail of new releases by submitting your e-mail address at the bottom of the Audacity web site home page: http://audacityteam.org/
Building Audacity from the source tarball is easy after the first time. The first time is the most difficult, but still pretty easy. After the first time, all you need to do is to:
“make” will take some time to complete, but the whole thing should be complete in about half an hour and you will then always have the latest release version.
The one extra step that is required the first time is to run (in a terminal) “sudo apt-get build-dep audacity”. This should be run before running ./configure. If this completes with no errors, then you are in business and the rest is dead easy.
You may also need
sudo apt-get install cmake
which is a new build dependency for Audacity 2.0.3 which “sudo apt-get build-dep audacity” might not fetch yet (but probably will do for 2.0.4 release).
Gale
Noted, thank you.
Thank you; I did that some time ago, which is how I knew that the new release was out. It’s a great way to be notified!
Well, as long as I get the PPA on the day of release, I shouldn’t have to do this. But, just in case, I have written down your instructions. If I need to do this, I shall do so. (I presume that I must uninstall the existing Audacity before building the new one.)
I have two questions about building from the tarball myself.
Thank you both for the time you’ve taken in leading me through this.
Oops, yes, I forgot about that, but as you say this should soon be included when running “sudo apt-get build-dep audacity”.
It would be best to do so.
By default, installing Audacity from a repository installs Audacity to /usr/share/ whereas installing from source installs to /usr/local/share/
If you don’t uninstall first you will probably end up with two versions, which could be quite confusing, so best to uninstall first.
When you run “make”, the executable is created in the source code folder.
Running “sudo make install” copies the executable to /usr/local/share/audacity and copies any required libraries that have been built the appropriate system folder (probably /usr/local/lib/ or usr/lib/ - I’m not sure where Ubuntu keeps everything). By default, only dependent libraries that are not on your system will be built and installed - if you already have the necessary shared libraries Audacity will use those. Most of the necessary shared libraries are pulled in from your repositories by “sudo apt-get build-dep audacity”.
Once you have installed Audacity with “sudo make install” you can delete the tarball and the folder that you extracted from it.
The only time that you may want to use it again is if you want to uninstall, or reinstall, but if you need to you can always download the tarball again. (Versions going back years are kept in the official download location).
When you come to update Audacity that you have built from the source code with another version built from the source code, there is no need to uninstall as long as you are using the default ./configure command. In this case, the new version will just overwrite the old version.
If at any time you want to go back to a repository version, it would be best to uninstall the home-built version first. To do this you will need the extracted source code, but if you have deleted it you can download it again. I’ll not give uninstalling instructions now as you’ve not built Audacity yet, but it’s straightforward enough to do.
You have been extremely helpful, Gale and Steve, thank you indeed.
If I should need to uninstall (although that would be unlikely!), I’ll ask again.
How do I mark this thread as solved?
Done.