Building Audacity 2.1.2 on Ubuntu 14.04 (LTS)

Note: These steps won’t work by default for Audacity 2.1.3 because 2.1.3 requires a minimum of gcc 4.9 but gcc 4.9 is not in the default Ubuntu 14.04 repositories. Follow Upgrade to gcc 4.9 to correct this.

  • The steps required to build Audacity 2.1.2 on Ubuntu 14.04 are almost the same as for building on Ubuntu 15.10 but with one important exception. By default, Ubuntu 14.04 uses WxGTK 2.8, which is too old for Audacity 2.1.2, but WxGTK 3.0 is available in the Ubuntu repository and we must install that as an additional step.

These steps were tested with Audacity 2.1.2 rc1 on a clean installation of Lubuntu 14.04.
They should also work on other versions of Ubuntu 14.04.
If any other version of Audacity is already installed, I would recommend uninstalling it before starting these steps.

Prerequisites:

Install “build-essential” using your preferred package manager.

Dependencies:

  • Install “libwxgtk3.0-dev” using your preferred package manager

To install the standard dependencies, open a terminal window and enter this command. Enter your password when prompted:

sudo apt-get build-dep audacity

Get the source code:

Build Audacity:

  1. Open a terminal window and navigate to the extracted folder
    (example, if you extracted audacity-minsrc-2.1.2 to your home folder:
cd audacity-minsrc-2.1.2
  1. Create a folder to build into:
mkdir build
  1. Change directory into the build folder:
cd build
  1. configure Audacity:
../configure --disable-dynamic-loading

For Audacity 2.1.3 you may need to add CXXFLAGS to the configure command thus to make sure you use gcc 4.9:

../configure --disable-dynamic-loading CXXFLAGS="-std=gnu++11"

Note the two dots at the start of the command.
5. build Audacity:

make
  1. Install:
sudo make install

(enter password when prompted)
Note: On (L)ubuntu 14.04, Audacity may not appear in the applications menu until you have logged out and back in again.

Optional Nyquist Workbench Module:

  1. If you wish to build Nyquist Workbench, it must be done on the same day as Audacity is built.
  2. Build the module
make modules
  1. Copy modules to Audacity installation folder:
sudo cp -r modules/ /usr/local/share/audacity/
  1. Eable Nyquist Workbench:
  • Launch Audacity
    • Enable Nyquist Workbench in “Edit->Preferences->modules”
    • Restart Audacity.