OpenAL compilation

This page explains how to recompile the OpenAL dependency on Windows and Linux. On macOS, we are using the system version of OpenAL, so there is no need to compile anything. OpenAL is used internally by Webots as a sound engine.

Get package

Download openal-soft-1.21.1.tar.bz2 from https://openal-soft.org, and move it in ~/software

Extract the package

tar jxf openal-soft-1.21.1.tar.bz2
mv openal-soft-1.21.1 openal
cd openal

Dependencies

On Linux, install libasound2-dev (ALSA) and libpulse-dev (Pulse audio)

sudo apt-get install libasound2-dev libpulse-dev

Compile

cd build

On Windows:

cmake -G "MSYS Makefiles" ..

Elsewhere:

cmake ..

On Linux, make sure that the cmake log contains the ALSA and the PulseAudio support:

-- Building OpenAL with support for the following backends:
--      PulseAudio, ALSA, OSS, WaveFile, Null

Note: probably that only PulseAudio is really required. Compiling with the ALSA support give us more possibilities to help users having sound issues.

Then:

make -jx
# several warnings are generated