Building and Installing whisperCast

whisperCast compiles and builds under a GNU/Linux-based system.

We tested compiled and tested the system under Ubuntu, versions 8.04 and 8.10, both 32 bit and 64 bit platforms (Intel processores). We also compiled and tested it under openSUSE 10.3. Normally it should run on any GNU/Linux-based system, provided that all the dependent libraries are installed.

In order to build, you need the cmake, cross platform build system. Ubuntu, and most GNU/Linux distributions provide this as a pre-compiled package. We recommend version 2.6 but 2.4 will also work.

You also need the g++ compiler, as most whisperCast is written in C++. Both 4.2 and 4.3 versions of g++ should work (we tested both), also you may have some luck with older versions (over 3.7), but we did not use those to compile the code for some time.

Please check the Library Dependencies page for the additional libraries needed to build and run whisperCast and install them.

For Ubuntu 8.10 you can get a list of packages that you need to install.

We highly recommend downloading the whole package, building and installing it. Alternately, you can download each component, build it and install it separately, in this order:

• whisperLib
• whisperStreamLib
• whisperCast
• whisperMediaLib
• whisperer

Next we treat the case in which you downloaded all components in one big package. When downloading individual components, use a similar procedure.

Build and Install

Once you have downloaded the package, expand it in a directory of your choice say $SOURCE_DIR:

0) $> cp whispercast-0.1.0.tar.gz $SOURCE_DIR
1) $> cd $SOURCE_DIR
2) $> tar -zxvf whispercast-0.1.0.tar.gz
3) $> cd whispersoft/build
4) $> cmake ..                 # this will take a while ..
5) $> make                     # this will take another while ..
6) $> make test                # optionally to run some tests
7) $> make install

If some of the dependent libraries are not installed, there will be a failure at step 4). If such a thing happens, please install the needed library(libraries) and restart from that step (4). By default whisperCast installs everything under $INSTALL_PREFIX=$HOME/whispercast. You can change this by running at step 4) above:

4) $> cmake .. -DINSTALL_PREFIX=<prefix dir>

In order to make in Debug mode, run at the same step:

4) $> cmake ... -DMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug

Of course, you can combine the two flags.

Testing

After installing (make install), you can test run whisperCast, by going to $INSTALL_PREFIX/bin and running in your terminal

$INSTALL_PREFIX/bin> ./start_whispercast.sh

whisperCast comes with a default test configuration and some test files (For your convenience we also provide a compiled (.swf) version of whisperPlayer-Basic in the whisperCast distribution).

To inspect whisperCast running on your local machine, go to http://localhost:8580/ (yes it can serve various http static things too). Look a little bit around and try to understand the configuration examples provided there. You can also enable some live sources (a standard check-up source and your local camera from /dev/video0) by starting whisperer:

$INSTALL_PREFIX/bin> ./start_whisperer.sh

From now on you may want to experiment more with the provided applications. We recommend reading:

• whisperCast
• whisperer