xSTUDIO can be built in just a few steps on many Linux distros by employing Microsoft's 'vcpkg' open source package build system. Note that the differences between gcc compiler versions can cause some issues where newer compiler versions are more or less strict about syntax. The developers of xSTUDIO are unable to ensure full compatibility with all compiler variations at this point and it's up to individuals following these guides to work through any issues encountered. Please do submit pull requests if you hit build problems and find solutions!
We assume that you have some knowledge of development on Linux platforms and have git, gcc & cmake installed on your system.
Follow these instructions - ensuring that you download the SDK for Linux platforms (rather than the MacOS platform used as an example in the linked guide).
To build xSTUDIO we need a number of other open source software packages. We use the VCPKG package manager to do this. All that we need to do is download the repo, run the bootstrap script and then switch to a specific git commit before we build xstudio. Run these commands in the Powershell:
git clone https://github.com/microsoft/vcpkg.git
./vcpkg/bootstrap-vcpkg.sh
git checkout c2aeddd80357b17592e59ad965d2adf65a19b22f
Download from github in the usual manner. Enter the root folder of the repo and ensure you are building from the correct branch. Example terminal commands might be as follows, to build from the develop branch:
git clone https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/xstudio.git
cd xstudio
git checkout develop
You must run these commands to add the OpenTimelineIO submodule to the tree
git submodule init
git submodule update
git apply cmake/otio_patch.diff
Open the CMakePresets.json file (which is in the root of the xstudio repo) in a text editor. You must look for the entry "Qt6_DIR" and modify the value that follows it to point to your installation of the Qt SDK. Specifically, you need to point to a directory named 'Qt6' which is in a directory named 'cmake', which is in a directory named 'lib'. For example, if user Mary Jane downloaded Qt into her home folder the entry should look like this:
"Qt6_DIR": "/home/maryjane/Qt/6.5.3/gcc_64/lib/cmake/Qt6",
First, we configure for building. Note that this cmake command may take several hours to complete the first time it is run, though subsequently it will take a few seconds. This is because xSTUDIO's dependencies (particularly ffmpeg) take a long time to download and build from the source code, which is what VCPKG is doing.
cmake -B build --preset LinuxRelease
When this has finished, you can build xSTUDIO with this command (in this case, the --parallel flag is set for a machine with 16 cores as an example).
cmake --build build --parallel 16
If the compilation is successfull you will find the xstudio app in ./build/bin/xstudio.bin. To enable the python API, you will need to modify your PYTHONPATH evnironment variable like this, or something similar:
export PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH:./build/bin/python/lib/python3.10/site-packages
Correct packaging and installation of xstudio and its dependencies across various Linux distros is a problem we are still working on! For now, it is up to individual developers to do an effective installation on their system. You can try running 'make install' from the 'build' folder. Use -DCMAKE_BUILD_PREFIX={path} to set a test installation location