xLights is a sequencer for Lights. xLights has usb and E1.31 drivers. You can create sequences in this object oriented program. You can create playlists, schedu
xLights is a sequencer for Lights. xLights has usb and E1.31 drivers. You can create sequences in this object oriented program. You can create playlists, schedu
xLights can be built and run on Linux, Mac OS/X, or Windows. This document describes how developers should set up their tool chain to build xLights on Linux. Ubuntu packages are provided for users at https://code.launchpad.net/~chris-debenham/+archive/ubuntu/xlights
xLights is written in C++ and uses the wxWidgets library as a
compatibility layer across operating systems. The minimum required version
of wxWidgets for xLights is v3.1.5. This can be compiled from
source or installed via packages if they are available for your distribution.
The provided makefile will download and build wxWidgets if needed - including
application of a small patch from the end of this file to fix the sizing of
bitmap buttons.
SDL2 needs to be 2.0.5 or later.
A precompiled libliquidfun.a.uname -p library and QM Vamp plugins are included for
i686, x86_64 and aarm64 - for other platforms it would need to be recompiled from
https://github.com/google/liquidfun
== Building for linux via docker container ==
If you wish to build for linux from other platforms or without having to touch your local install you can use Docker to test building To setup the nessecary docker image you can checkout the build file from git and build directly via:
docker build -t xlights-build https://github.com/xLightsSequencer/xlights-build-docker.gitThis will leave you with a suitable base image Once this is setup you can build xLights via:
docker run --name buildvm xlights-build /bin/bash RecipeIf you want to build the appimage you can use:
docker run --name buildvm xlights-build /bin/bash Recipe.appimageIf you want to create a fresh build then the container can be removed with:
docker rm buildvm== Building locally from source ==
Ubuntu 24.04 is the minimum supported release. It is what the official builds and the CI are compiled on, so it is the only baseline that is continuously verified. Older releases may happen to work, but are not tested and are not supported.
These instructions have been tested on the following distributions:
Instructions for other Linux distributions will vary.
a) Using Software Manager (or apt-get or rpm), install the following packages. (Fedora packages will be named differently and have 'devel' instead of 'dev' in their name)
build-essential
libgtk-3-dev
libgstreamer1.0-dev
libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-dev
freeglut3-dev
libavcodec-dev
libavformat-dev
libavfilter-dev
libswscale-dev
libsdl2-dev
libzstd-dev
libcurl4-openssl-dev
liblua5.3-dev
libwebp-dev
libsecret-1-dev
libegl-dev (required for Wayland support)
libfreetype-dev (used for text/shape effect rendering)
libharfbuzz-dev (used for text/shape effect rendering)
libfontconfig-dev (used for text/shape effect rendering)
libavahi-compat-libdnssd-dev (mDNS/Bonjour controller discovery, e.g. WLED)
cbp2make (optional but recommended if compiling from git)
Example command to install packages on Ubuntu
sudo apt-get install g++ gcc build-essential libgtk-3-dev libgstreamer1.0-dev libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-dev freeglut3-dev libavcodec-dev libavformat-dev libswscale-dev libsdl2-dev libavutil-dev libavfilter-dev libzstd-dev libwebp-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev liblua5.3-dev libminizip-dev libxlsxwriter-dev libegl-dev libfreetype-dev libharfbuzz-dev libfontconfig-dev libavahi-compat-libdnssd-dev wget git cbp2make curl libsecret-1-dev
mDNS/Bonjour controller discovery (WLED and similar):
BUILD: without libavahi-compat-libdnssd-dev, is unavailable
and mDNS-based controller discovery silently compiles out (WLED
controllers will not be auto-discovered), with no build error.
RUNTIME: also requires the avahi-daemon service running:
sudo apt-get install avahi-daemon
sudo systemctl enable --now avahi-daemon
GPU-accelerated rendering (Vulkan):
BUILD: the compute kernels (src-core/effects/vulkan/shaders/*.comp) are
compiled to SPIR-V at build time by glslc, so glslc is a required build
tool (like ispc for the SIMD kernels). The Vulkan headers, volk loader,
and VulkanMemoryAllocator are vendored as git submodules (fetched by the
recursive submodule checkout) and volk loads the driver at runtime, so
nothing Vulkan is linked. The Vulkan Shader effect additionally
translates user GLSL at runtime via glslang, which comes from the
distro: glslang-dev pulls in spirv-tools, which it needs because
the packaged glslang is built with the SPIR-V optimizer enabled.
Install glslc and glslang:
sudo apt-get install glslc glslang-dev
(or build with -DXLIGHTS_USE_VULKAN=OFF / omit it in the .cbp to skip the
GPU compute backend entirely.)
RUNTIME: to actually USE GPU acceleration the machine needs a Vulkan
loader and an ICD/driver; without them xLights logs "no Vulkan loader"
and falls back to CPU rendering:
sudo apt-get install libvulkan1 mesa-vulkan-drivers
(mesa-vulkan-drivers covers Intel/AMD; NVIDIA users get Vulkan from the
proprietary driver. Enable it under Preferences > Other > GPU rendering.)
Hardware video decode (VA-API):
No build-time dependency — decode goes through FFmpeg's generic
hwaccel API (libavcodec/libavutil, already required above), which
resolves VAAPI via the distro's own libva at runtime; nothing
VAAPI-specific is linked by xLights itself.
RUNTIME: needs a VA-API driver for the GPU (Intel: intel-media-va-driver
or intel-media-va-driver-non-free for newer iGPUs; AMD/Mesa:
mesa-va-drivers):
sudo apt-get install vainfo intel-media-va-driver mesa-va-drivers
`vainfo` confirms the driver initializes ("VAProfile..." lines printed)
before relying on it. Enable under Preferences > Other > Hardware Video
Decoding — it auto-tries vaapi then vdpau, no manual selection needed.
Example commands to install packages on Fedora 42
Fedora 38+ defaults to "ffmpeg-free" library to switch to full ffmpeg run, add rpmfusion repo first:
sudo dnf install https://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm
sudo dnf swap ffmpeg-free ffmpeg --allowerasing
Note: with Fedora cbp2make is not avalible in an offical repo, you must build and install it manually:
sudo dnf install doxygen
git clone https://github.com/mirai-computing/cbp2make.git
cd cbp2make
make -f cbp2make.cbp.mak.unix
sudo install -m 755 -p -D bin/Release/cbp2make /usr/local/bin/cbp2make
Install other packages:
sudo dnf install https://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm https://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm
sudo dnf install gcc-c++ gtk3-devel gstreamer1-devel gstreamer1-plugins-base-devel freeglut-devel gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free-devel ffmpeg-devel SDL2-devel libzstd-devel libwebp-devel curl-develel lua-devel curl libsecret-devel expat-devel mesa-libEGL-devel freetype-devel harfbuzz-devel fontconfig-devel avahi-compat-libdns_sd-devel wget git
Note: Fedora lua package is versionless, to fake cbp/pkgconfig to 5.3 like ubuntu, add a sym link
sudo ln -s /usr/lib64/pkgconfig/lua.pc /usr/lib64/pkgconfig/lua53.pcb) Get the xLights source code by opening a terminal window and typing the following:
git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/xLightsSequencer/xLights.git xLightsxLights can be built 2 ways on Linux. First, you can use the supplied makefile to build it. This is sufficient to get xLights running, but you will be limited in what source code modifications you can make. Minor code changes or enhancements will be OK. The second way to build is to install the Code::Blocks IDE and compile xLights within the IDE. If you plan on modifying xLights yourself, this may be the easiest way to go.
To build xLights using the supplied makefile proceed to step 'c'. To build using Code::Blocks, proceed to step 'd'.:
c) Build xLights using the supplied makefiles:
Build using the simplified top-level Makefile in the main xLights
directory.
If wxWidgets 3.1 is not available then as part of this wxWidgets 3.1
will be downloaded, compiled statically linked to xLights
$ make
Then install xLights to the default /usr/local/bin location as root:
# make install
To run the clean command:
$ make clean
To uninstall the xLights binary as root:
# make uninstall
Use `make SUDO= PREFIX=/someplace` to install to an alternative
location without sudo as long as the path is writable as the current
user. Set LD_LIBRARY_PATH=PREFIX/lib when running xLights.
You may get some compiler warnings, however, the executable 'xLights'
should get built in the ./bin directory. The proper dependencies are
not currently setup in the makefile to trigger rebuilds when some
files are modified, so you may have to run the clean command if your
code does not build properly after making modifications to the source.
If you want to build using Code::Blocks, proceed to step 'd'.d) Building xLights using Code::Blocks
Install the Code::Blocks IDE using your distribution's package
manager as long as it is version 16.01 or later. Otherwise,
you can try downloading it directly from the Code::Blocks web site:
http://www.codeblocks.org/downloads
Also, you may need to install libwxsmithlib0 to
enable visual layout.
You will need to run 'make' from the command line once to build and
patch wxwidgets. Then ensure that the wx-config command is in your
PATH so that codeblocks can find it. The simplest way to do this is
to go into the wxWidgets-3.1.5 directory and run 'sudo make install'
Now you are ready to use Code::Blocks to build xLights
by double-clicking on the xLights.cbp file.
In order for the double-click to work, you may need
to first right-click on the cbp file, select properties,
and uncheck the box indicating that the file is runnable.
Make sure you set the target to "Release Linux" before you build.That should be all you need to build xLights. If you get missing decoder messages related to gstreamer, a couple of things to try are:
==============================================================================
If it is necessary to rebuild the xLights.cbp.mak makefile such as when new source files are added to the project, the command used to run cbp2make is:
cbp2make -in xLights.cbp -cfg ../cbp2make.cfg -out xLights.cbp.mak --with-deps --keep-outdir --keep-objdir
This will be run automatically at compile time if cbp2make is installed.
==============================================================================
Troubleshooting:
With so few Linux users and a general lack of experience in the platform I think it is worthwhile documenting some troubleshooting steps that can help determine issues.
To capture a log of systems calls
strace -f -tt > strace.txt 2>&1
you may also consider adding -y or -yy to capture socket and file descriptor information if
supported on your system
These logs files are large and difficult to analyse but provide our best chance of debugging
these tNo open issues yet, or sync has not completed.