m-onz

installing pure data and GEM

19.04.24

This guide has been tested on debian linux.

Installing pure data from source

We want to install it from source to get the latest version and ensure its compatible with netpd.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential automake autoconf libtool gettext libasound2-dev libjack-jackd2-dev tcl tk

git clone https://github.com/pure-data/pure-data.git
cd pure-data
./autogen.sh
./configure --enable-jack  # Enables JACK audio server support
make
sudo make install

Install GEM from source

We need to install from source and ensure it works with our pure data installation.

sudo apt-get install libgl1-mesa-dev libglu1-mesa-dev freeglut3-dev libglew-dev

git clone https://github.com/umlaeute/Gem.git
cd Gem

./autogen.sh
./configure
At this stage you need to ensure you have at least one video backend with a checkbox to say its enabled. If you want to use .mp4 videos you may need to install some extra codecs and dev packages. For example for debian I installed these extra packages. 
sudo apt-get install libavcodec-dev libavformat-dev libswscale-dev
Then after running configure I could see that mp4 video's are supported as a video backend... now we can run make... 
make
After this has finished to finalise the installation run... 
sudo make install

Ensure audio is running at the highest priority.

We want to configure Pd to run at the highest priority scheduling to make sure there is less chance of pops or clicks under high CPU load.

/etc/security/limits.conf

@audio - rtprio 95
@audio - memlock unlimited
yourusername - rtprio 95
yourusername - memlock unlimited

Add your user to the audio group

sudo usermod -a -G audio yourusername

Log out and log back in / restart your computer to be sure everything is ready to start. Then open Pure Data from your applications menu. Select "yes" when it asks to make a directory under "Documents/Pd".

Optional step: dark canvas

I like to invert the patch cables so its white lines on a black background. This is the method I use:

sudo apt-get install wget
cd ~/Documents/Pd/externals
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/m-onz/pd-dark-canvas/master/dark-canvas-plugin.tcl

This downloads a "theme" file into a folder Pd will check upon startup. Re-start Pd and you should see an inverted canvas.

In conclusion

If everything is working you should see no errors or warnings when you open Pd and all the GEM and audio examples should work from the menu: help/browser

I sometimes like to switch back to the default theme to use netpd and I just move the "dark-canvas-plugin.tcl" file somewhere else temporarily and restart Pd to achieve this.



pure data