Building - Cinnamon Wiki - Cinnamon

Building Cinnamon

Cinnamon works on Windows (with or without Cygwin), BSD using OSS (open sound system), and any Unix system with OpenAL support.

The current backends are OpenAL (supported on all platforms), DirectSound (Windows-only), and OSS (Unix only).

Note that if you are building on OS X, it is recommended to use OpenAL-soft rather than Apple's OpenAL. This is because Apple's OpenAL has an extremely small, fixed number of sound buffers (regardless of how much data is placed in each buffer or when they are queued), which does not interact well with the architecture of Cinnamon.

Building with OpenAL on Unix or Cygwin

To build using the OpenAL backend on Unix (including Linux), you will need GNU make or BSD bmake, gcc 4.2+ or clang 3.1+, and OpenAL. It is recommended to use openal-soft, as that is what is used to test Cinnamon, and some other implementations (including Apple's OpenAL) may not work with longer sounds.

Using GNU make

To build using GNU make, navigate to the src directory and run:

make

Note that on BSD systems, GNU make is called gmake.

Using BSD bmake

You can use bmake to build Cinnamon on Linux. Navigate to the src directory and run: bmake BACKEND=openal

Note that on BSD systems, bmake is simply called make.

Building with OSS on Unix

To build using the OSS backend, you will need GNU make or BSD bmake and gcc 4.2+ or clang 3.1+. Note that on some systems (particularly Solaris) it is recommended to use the OpenAL backend.

Using GNU make

To build using GNU make, navigate to the src directory and run:

make BACKEND=oss

Note that on BSD systems, GNU make is called gmake.

Using BSD bmake

You can use bmake to build Cinnamon on Linux. Navigate to the src directory and run: bmake

Note that on BSD systems, bmake is simply called make.

Building with OSS on Cygwin

The OSS backend is not recommended for use with Cygwin due to the somewhat high CPU usage it causes, but it can be built and does work. You will need GNU make and gcc 4.2. Navigate to the src directory and run:

make BACKEND=oss

Note that the aucat test program does not work properly under Cygwin when using OSS, although the sinewave test program does.

Building with DirectSound

To use the DirectSound backend, you will need Visual Studio 2010 or higher. Cinnamon has been tested with 2015 and 2017. You will also need to be sure to install Microsoft's nmake utility, or use Qt's open source replacement for Microsoft nmake, which is called "jom".

To build, navigate to the src directory in the Visual Studio developer command prompt, and run:

nmake /fnmakefile

Building with OpenAL using Visual Studio

To use the OpenAL backend with Visual Studio, you will need Visual Studio 2010 or higher. Cinnamon has been tested with 2015 and 2017. You will also need to be sure to install Microsoft's nmake utility, or use Qt's open source replacement for Microsoft nmake, which is called "jom". It is recommended to use openal-soft, as that is what is used to test Cinnamon.

To build, navigate to the src directory in the Visual Studio developer command prompt, and run:

nmake /fnmakefile openal

Note that currently, building the aucat and sinetest demo programs when using OpenAL and Visual Studio together is not supported.