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Building From Source

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GitHub Action edited this page Sep 24, 2024 · 59 revisions

ALVR can be built on Windows and Linux. The following instructions are for both OSes.

Common Prerequisites

Preferred IDE (optional): Visual Studio Code with rust-analyzer extension

You need to install rustup.

On Windows you need also Chocolatey.

Streamer Building

First you need to gather some additional resources in preparation for the build.

If you are on Linux, install these additional packages:

  • Arch

    Note: At time of writing Arch gcc is too new to be compatible with nvcc. This means there is no neat way to compile an nvidia compatible build. Recommended workarounds are to build in some kind of containerised environment. This has been done successfully with both nixos and flatpak - but are not documented yet.

    sudo pacman -S clang curl nasm pkgconf yasm vulkan-headers libva-mesa-driver unzip ffmpeg libpipewire

  • Gentoo

    • media-video/ffmpeg >= 4.4 [encode libdrm vulkan vaapi]
    • sys-libs/libunwind
    • dev-lang/rust >= 1.72
    • media-video/pipewire [jacksdk]

  • Debian 12 / Ubuntu 20.04 / Pop!_OS 20.04

    sudo apt install pulseaudio-utils build-essential pkg-config libclang-dev libssl-dev libasound2-dev libjack-dev libgtk-3-dev libvulkan-dev libunwind-dev gcc yasm nasm curl libx264-dev libx265-dev libxcb-render0-dev libxcb-shape0-dev libxcb-xfixes0-dev libspeechd-dev libxkbcommon-dev libdrm-dev libva-dev libvulkan-dev vulkan-headers libpipewire-0.3-dev libspa-0.3-dev git

  • Fedora

    sudo dnf groupinstall 'Development Tools' | For c++ and build tools
sudo dnf install nasm yasm libdrm-devel vulkan-headers pipewire-jack-audio-connection-kit-devel atk-devel gdk-pixbuf2-devel cairo-devel rust-gdk0.15-devel x264-devel vulkan-devel libunwind-devel clang openssl-devel alsa-lib-devel libva-devel pipewire-devel git

    If you are using Nvidia, see Fedora cuda installation

Move to the root directory of the project, then run this command (paying attention to the bullet points below):

cargo xtask prepare-deps --platform [your platform] [--gpl] [--no-nvidia]
  • Replace [your platform] with your computer OS, either windows or linux
  • Windows only: Use the --gpl flag if you want to download, build and bundle FFmpeg inside the ALVR streamer. Keep in mind that this is only needed for software encoding. As the name suggests, if you use this flag you can only redistribute the final package as GPLv2.0 licensed; because of the x264 encoder.
  • Linux only: Use the --no-nvidia flag if you have a AMD gpu.

Next up is the proper build of the streamer. Run the following:

cargo xtask build-streamer --release [--gpl]

Windows only: Again, the --gpl flag is needed only if you want to bundle FFmpeg.

You can find the resulting package in build/alvr_streamer_[your platform]

If you want to edit and rebuild the code, you can skip the prepare-deps command and run only the build-streamer command.

Fedora CUDA installation

If you are here for CUDA installation on Fedora you're at the right place! Else continue down to Android App Building

1. Install Nvidia drivers and Fedora CUDA driver

sudo dnf update -y

(Reboot if you have a new kernel)

sudo dnf install akmod-nvidia
sudo dnf install xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-cuda

Wait until modinfo -F version nvidia doesn't report "ERROR: Module nvidia not found" anymore

2. Install Nvidia's CUDA

In the previous step, we installed Fedora's CUDA that doesn't work with ALVR, installing Nvidia's CUDA works and creates directories instead

sudo dnf config-manager --add-repo https://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/repos/fedora37/x86_64/cuda-fedora37.repo

Change the Fedora version if you are on a different version. You should check if your version is supported by inspecting the repo

sudo dnf clean all
sudo dnf module disable nvidia-driver
sudo dnf -y install cuda
export PATH=/usr/local/cuda-12.3/bin${PATH:+:${PATH}}

If your cuda version is different, change it to the version that is installed. You can check installed versions by doing ls /usr/local/ | grep "cuda" in your terminal

Note about Nvidia's CUDA

  • Disabling the nvidia-driver doesn't disable Nvidia drivers but prevents nvidia dkms from installing over the akmod driver

3. Install gcc11 install with homebrew

Becuase cuda cannot be ran without a gcc version lower than or equal to gcc12, you will need to install a gcc version on homebrew. The fedora gcc11 package got removed so this is the only way sadly To install homebrew, run this command:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

Then install gcc11

brew install gcc@11

Notes on installing gcc11 with homebrew

  • If brew is not found in your path, run the following separately to add brew to your path:

    test -d ~/.linuxbrew && eval "$(~/.linuxbrew/bin/brew shellenv)" 
test -d /home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew && eval "$(/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/bin/brew shellenv)"
echo "eval \"\$($(brew --prefix)/bin/brew shellenv)\"" >> ~/.bashrc

4. Modify dependencies.rs to use correct cuda path and gcc version

Because CURA installs as a symlink by default, we need to change the dependencies.rs to use the directory From the ALVR directory edit the ./alvr/xtask/src/dependencies.rs, and change two lines:

  • Line 159, change cuda -> cuda-12.3 (or whatever version you have)
  • Line 179, replace that line with --nvccflags=\"-ccbin /home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/bin/g++-11 -gencode arch=compute_52,code=sm_52 -O2\" (Change homebrew path if needed, default is used)

You should be good to go! Refer to Streamer Building for the commands to build ALVR

Android App Building

1. Installing necessary packages

For the app you need install:

  • Android Studio or the sdkmanager
  • Android SDK Platform-Tools 29 (Android 10)
  • Latest Android NDK (currently v25.1.8937393)

On Linux, the specific package names for the android tools can differ from distro to distro, see up on the wiki for more information:

The three mentioned developer applications can be installed from upstream; although the packages and setup responsible for the required tools can differ between distros, being:

  • Arch
    • Packages can vary, read up on the Arch Wiki's Android page.
  • Gentoo
    • dev-util/android-studio
    • dev-util/android-sdk-update-manager
    • dev-util/android-ndk >= 25.1

For Debian, it requires to have the non-free repository to be enabled:

  • Debian 12 / Ubuntu 22.10 / Pop!_OS 22.10

    sudo apt install android-sdk-platform-tools-common sdkmanager google-android-ndk-r26b-installer

2. Setting environment variables

For Windows, set the environment variables:

  • JAVA_HOME:
    • Example: C:\Program Files\Android\Android Studio\jre
  • ANDROID_HOME:
    • Example: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Android\Sdk
  • ANDROID_NDK_HOME:
    • Example: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Android\Sdk\ndk\25.1.8937393

For Linux, the correct directories for the environment variables can greatly differ depending on the type of install. See the wiki page of your distro for more information:

Distro wikis that weren't listed above does not mention of environment variables, although generally they would be as:

  • JAVA_HOME:
    • /usr/lib/jvm/default-java/bin
  • ANDROID_HOME:
    • Arch: ~/Android/Sdk
    • Gentoo: ~/Android
    • Debian / Ubuntu / Pop!_OS: ~/AndroidSDK
  • ANDROID_NDK_HOME:
    • Arch: /opt/android-sdk/ndk
    • Linux: /usr/lib/android-sdk/ndk

3. Building

First you need to gather some additional resources in preparation for the build.
Move to the root directory of the project, then run this command:

cargo xtask prepare-deps --platform android

Before building the app, Android has to have us to agree to the licenses otherwise building the app will halt and fail. To accept the agreements, follow the instructions for your corresponding OS:

  • Windows:

    cd "%ANDROID_SDK_ROOT%\tools\bin"
sdkmanager.bat --licenses

  • Linux:

    cd ~/AndroidSDK
sdkmanager --licenses

Next up is the proper build of the app. Run the following:

cargo xtask build-client --release

The built APK will be in build/alvr_client_quest. You can then use adb or SideQuest to install it to your headset.

To build and run:

cd alvr/client_openxr
cargo apk run

You need the headset to be connected via USB and with the screen on to successfully launch the debugger and logcat.

Troubleshooting (Linux)

On some distributions, Steam Native runs ALVR a little better. To get Steam Native on Ubuntu run it with:

env STEAM_RUNTIME=0 steam

On Arch Linux, you can also get all the required libraries by downloading the steam-native-runtime package from the multilib repository

sudo pacman -S steam-native-runtime

Dependencies might be missing then, so run:

cd ~/.steam/root/ubuntu12_32
file * | grep ELF | cut -d: -f1 | LD_LIBRARY_PATH=. xargs ldd | grep 'not found' | sort | uniq

Some dependencies have to be fixed manually for example instead of forcing a downgrade to libffi version 6 (which could downgrade a bunch of the system) you can do a symlink instead (requires testing):

cd /lib/i386-linux-gnu
ln -s libffi.so.7 libffi.so.6

and

cd /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu
ln -s libffi.so.7 libffi.so.6

A few dependencies are distro controlled, you can attempt to import the package at your own risk perhaps needing the use of alien or some forced import commands, but its not recommended (turns your system into a dependency hybrid mess), nor supported!

Start here

Configuration

Troubleshooting

Development

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