HOW-TO: Building amaroK from SVN source

[mlomker]

I've always had odd problems with the version of amaroK that came with Breezy and Hoary. It is also my favorite application on linux! For that reason I like to have the very latest version of it installed. The way to do that is to periodically build it from the latest SVN source.

The amaroK community provides an automated script that makes the process fairly easy, but you have to install a number of development files in order to get it to compile. This how-to will walk you through that process.

Remove any installed version of amaroK

sudo apt-get remove amarok amarok-arts amarok-xine amarok-gstreamer

Install necessary development files

sudo apt-get install kdelibs4-dev subversion unsermake automake1.9 kdebase-dev build-essential ruby
sudo apt-get install libgstreamer-plugins0.8-dev #gstreamer support
sudo apt-get install libxine-dev #xine support
sudo apt-get install libmp4v2-dev libfaad2-dev #aac/mp4 tag editor support
sudo apt-get install libtunepimp2-dev #recommended-supports lookups for song lyrics, etc.

Download Taglib 1.4 for i386 or PowerPC. If you run another architecture then download the source and compile your own.

Change to the download directory:

sudo dpkg -i taglib-1.4_i386.deb

Download the script and install amaroK

Right click and download the amarok-svn.sh script. Save or move it to a directory where you can keep the amarok source files in (your home directory is probably the easiest, ~). The script will create a directory underneath the one that you run it from.

Change to your directory:

sudo chmod +x amarok-svn.sh
./amarok-svn.sh

Say 'yes' when prompted whether or not to use sudo for installation. You can take the defaults for the rest of the questions.

The first compile process takes a few minutes but future updates (run every few days if you wish) only download the new files and take much less time. The script automatically downloads/compiles/installs amaroK for you. You will find an icon in your menu once the installation is complete.

Gnome Users: Reboot.

See this post if you're interested in mysql support.

Troubleshooting

amaroK's main webpage

wiki for the script