Supported Platforms

FluidSynth is developed on Linux and thus Linux usually has the most up to date support. It is also regularly tested on Mac OSX and there is a README-OSX accompanying the source code which describes installing on this platform. FluidSynth can also run on Windows and work is under way to make it easier for Windows users to install. Its likely that it will also work on other platforms (most noteably Unix like operating systems).

Requirements

Starting with FluidSynth 1.1.0 the glib library is required (links to GTK+ page which also uses glib).

Building FluidSynth requires your normal list of applications one would find on a system for building software (on Unix this includes gcc, autoconf, automake, etc). Most other externally used software is optional.

Optional

  • libsndfile - For rendering MIDI to audio files of different formats.
  • JACK - Jack Audio Connection Kit, inter-application audio routing found on Linux and Mac OS X
  • ALSA - Modern audio system found on Linux. FluidSynth supports audio output and the ALSA MIDI sequencer
  • OSS - Open Sound System (the older Unix sound system)
  • PulseAudio - Linux sound server
  • CoreAudio - Audio system found on Mac OS X
  • DirectSound - Sound drivers found on Windows sytems
  • MidiShare - Cross platform MIDI environment
  • LASH - LASH Audio Session Handler, session management support for ALSA and Jack applications
  • LADSPA - Audio plugin architecture. FluidSynth can use LADSPA plugins (enabling LADSPA support currently not recommended)
  • Readline - For improved command line editing features in the built in shell

Distributions

Many distributions have a package already for FluidSynth.

  • Gentoo
    • emerge fluidsynth
  • Ubuntu or Debian
    • sudo apt-get install fluidsynth

Please add to this section if you know how to install FluidSynth packages for a distribution not yet listed.

Source Archives

FluidSynth is also relatively easy to build from a source archive (on Unix like systems). Please see BuildingFluidSynth for more detailed instructions of how to build FluidSynth from source.

The Savannah FluidSynth releases page contains released source archives of FluidSynth.

Subversion

The FluidSynth subversion repository can be found at https://resonance.org/svn/fluidsynth and can be browsed using Trac.

Example check out of FluidSynth trunk using the command line Subversion client: 

svn co https://resonance.org/svn/fluidsynth/trunk/fluidsynth

Building from subversion

Building from subversion is almost identical to building from a source tarball, except ./autogen.sh should be run before the ./configure && make and make install sequences. This script will create the ./configure script and requires development packages for the various dependencies.