Jonathan Wilkes’ Purr Data a.k.a. Pd-l2ork 2 is an improved version of Miller Puckette’s Pd. It is based on Ico Bukvic’s Pd-l2ork, which in turn is a fork of Hans-Christoph Steiner’s Pd-extended.
This repository is a mirror of Wilkes’ original Gitlab repository available at https://git.purrdata.net/jwilkes/purr-data. We mainly use this as a one-stop shop to make it easy for you to get your hands on the latest source and the available releases, including pre-built packages for Linux, macOS and Windows.
Here’s a quick shopping list:
- Downloads: This is where you get ready-made packages for Linux, Mac and Windows. Please also make sure to check our installation instructions below.
- JGU packages: You can also use these if you’re on Arch or a recent Ubuntu version.
- Sources: Github mirror of the sources, updated regularly.
- Development: Wilkes’ Gitlab repository. This is where you should go for submitting bug reports and pull requests.
- Mailing list: The DISIS Pd-l2ork mailing list is the right place for getting help and discuss Purr Data, so please subscribe!
- Intro: Read this to learn more about Purr Data.
There’s also a video up on YouTube of the presentation Meet the Cat: Pd-L2Ork and its New Cross-Platform Version “Purr Data” at the Linux Audio Conference 2017 (Jean MONNET University, Saint-Etienne).
Enjoy your stay!
About Purr Data
Pd (Pure Data) is a graphical data-flow programming environment which is geared towards real-time interactive computer music and multimedia applications. It is a full-featured open-source alternative to its commercial sibling, Cycling74’s Max.
Purr Data serves the same purpose, but offers a new and much improved graphical user interface and includes many 3rd party plug-ins. Like Pd, it runs on Linux, macOS and Windows, and is open-source throughout.
Purr Data also offers some notable advancements over “classic” Pd-l2ork:
- cross platform compatibility
- modern GUI written in JavaScript (using nw.js)
- improved SVG graphics
Purr Data continues to offer all of Pd-l2ork’s GUI and usability improvements, a help browser giving access to help patches in PDDP (Pd Documentation Project) format, and a large collection of bundled 3rd party externals, while using the latest and greatest version of Pd’s tried and proven real-time engine under the hood.
The Name?
Purr Data is the official nickname of the Pd-l2ork 2.x branch. Quite obviously the name is a play on “Pure Data” on which “Purr Data” is ultimately based. It also raises positive connotations of soothing purring sounds, and makes for a nice logo. 😺
Installation
The easiest way to get up and running is to use one of the available binary packages and installers for Linux (Debian/Ubuntu), Mac and Windows available from the Github releases page. Generally you can just double-click these packages and go through the usual (platform-dependent) installation process. In the case of the Debian/Ubuntu packages, this may require you to install a bunch of dependencies first, as described in the README file. The Mac and Windows packages should be self-contained.
Linux users: The downloads offer Linux packages for a selection of stable Debian and Ubuntu releases (at the time of this writing: Debian Jessie and Stretch, Ubuntu 14.04 and 16.04 a.k.a. Trusty and Xenial). Please check the package name to make sure that you get the right package for your system. Packages for Arch and newer Ubuntu releases are provided by JGU, see below. If your Linux distro is not among any of these then sorry, you’ll just have to bite the bullet and build Purr Data from source. (It’s not that hard any more once you got all the required dependencies installed, but it may take a little while.)
JGU Packages
This is an alternative collection of ready-made Linux packages for Arch Linux and recent Ubuntu releases, maintained by the Johannes Gutenberg University (JGU). They offer the following advantages:
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“Classic” Pd-l2ork and Purr Data can be installed alongside each other (at least on older Ubuntu systems on which Pd-l2ork 1 still runs).
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The packages are available through proper package repositories (AUR/pacman for Arch, Launchpad PPAs for Ubuntu) and thus can be installed and updated automatically through your distribution’s standard package manager. Required dependencies will also be installed automatically.
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The packages are updated more frequently (also between releases) from the current git sources whenever there are important new features or bugfixes.
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Additional programming extensions for the Faust and Pure programming languages are available.
Please refer to the following links for more information and detailed installation instructions: Arch, Ubuntu.
Building from Source
CAVEAT: Purr Data is a big package with many parts and many dependencies, building it from source can take a long time, even on modern hardware. So please be patient! :) If you can’t wait, though, there’s also a minimal, vanilla-like build available, see Purr Data “Light” below.
To build Purr Data from source, you’ll have to clone the git repository as follows:
git clone https://github.com/agraef/purr-data
Or, if you prefer to build straight from Wilke’s upstream repository:
git clone https://git.purrdata.net/jwilkes/purr-data.git
Make sure that you have all the requisite dependencies installed (Linux, Mac, Windows), then run make in the toplevel source directory:
make
On Debian/Ubuntu, Mac and Windows this should leave the ready-made package in the toplevel source directory. Install this as usual. On other Linux systems you can run the following command instead (this also works on Debian/Ubuntu, if you prefer this method or if you don’t have the Debian packaging tools installed):
sudo make install
You can uninstall the software again as follows:
sudo make uninstall
Afterwards, to clean the source directory:
make realclean
Note that this puts the source into pristine state again, like after a fresh checkout, so that you can run make from a clean slate again. Also, all build artifacts will be gone, and hence you won’t be able to run make install or make uninstall any more. So you want to do this only after you’ve finished the installation process.
Purr Data “Light”
There are some ways to speed up the build, please check the Makefile for details. In particular, try running:
make light
This will build a minimal, no-frills, vanilla-like Purr Data system with just the essential externals included. This build finishes much faster. It will also lack the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink collection of externals which a Purr Data installation normally includes. But vanilla Pd users might actually prefer it that way.