Compiling puredata externals

I had a further look: many libraries are already built for ARM (Bela's architecture, more precisely armv7) and are available via Deken. A possible Deken workflow to obtain pre-built libraries this way from Deken:

• open the most recent Pd on your desktop
• open the "Help -> Find Externals" dialog (aka Deken)
• at the bottom click "More -> Preferences"
• in the "Install externals to directory" section, check which one is the currently selected directory. Make a note of it somewhere else as you'll want to restore it later on. Click the ... button. create a new folder in a convenient location (e.g.: Desktop), called pd-externals-for-bela, select this and close the file picker; make sure this stays selected in the radio button selection
• in "platform settings" make sure "hide foreign architectures" is ticked
• in "platform settings" select "User-defined-platform" and enter (exactly) Linux-armv7-32
• close the dialog with "OK"
• now search for libraries you need for Bela and if a result is produced, click on it and it will "install" it in the folder you selected above. You can do this for several libraries one after the other.
• once done, revert the settings in the "Install externals to directory" section and in "Platform settings" select "Default platform". Note that the above will not have installed those libraries in such a way that they are usable from Pd on the host. You can repeat the same procedure at the previous step to install them on the host (if you haven't already) now that you have restored the settings.

Now, you can install these libraries on Bela with a single command:

ssh root@bela.local mkdir -p Bela/projects/pd-externals # creates the pd-externals dummy project if needed
scp -r root@bela.local ~/Desktop/pd-externals-for-bela/* root@bela.local:Bela/projects/pd-externals/ 

(amend the path to the ~/Desktop/pd-externals-for-bela folder if you used a different one ).

Note that you will need to use [declare -lib] and/or [declare -path] for the libraries and externals to become available on Bela. I recommend you do the same on the host (i.e.: remove any non-standard paths from Preferences->Paths and any libraries from Preferences->Startup).

In particular, iemlib ships with a combination of abstractions and a single-file library, so you will need two declares, a -lib for externals and a -path for abstractions. If this is confusing, the official documentation tries to explain it.

In your case:

[declare -lib iemlib]
[declare -path iemlib]
[sparse_FIR~] // "external" verify it creates
[unsig~] // "abstraction" verify it creates

while moonlib is a multi-file library so you should just need

[declare -path moonlib]
[char2f] // verify it creates

giuliomoro
Sorry, I didn't refresh my web page before to answer you this morning.
Thanks again more
It's just perfect to download directly compiled armv7 versions from deken !

Download successful !

The installation seemed ok, but when I checked that the new objects were installed, the BELA IDE gave me the error

"couldn't create"

So I checked the contents of the >pd-externals folder by reconnecting to Bela via the terminal and via the line

ls ~/Bela/projects/pd-externals

The result is this

ggee pd-externals-for-bela

So I reinstalled with the correct addresses for each new isolated library

scp -r root@bela.local /Users/MYUSERNAME/Desktop/pd-externals-for-bela/iemlib root@bela.local:Bela/projects/pd -externals/

And so on.

I then checked for the presence of the files in pd-externals, then checked inside the folders. Everything is OK !

On the other hand, Impossible to create these new objects!
Only the ggee library works (the one I compiled myself following your first instructions)

giuliomoro
This is what the IDE shows when I run the attached test patch

Running Pd 0.48-2
Audio channels in use: 2
Analog channels in use: 8
Digital channels in use: 16
No MIDI device enabled
bonk version 1.5
fiddle version 1.1 TEST4
pique 0.1 for PD version 23
sigmund~ version 0.07
error: ../pd-externals/iemlib/iemlib.l_arm: /lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libm.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.29' not found (required by ../pd-externals/iemlib/iemlib.l_arm)
sparse_FIR~
error: ... couldn't create
verbose(4): ... you might be able to track this down from the Find menu.
unsig~
error: ... couldn't create
char2f
error: ... couldn't create

The most worrying error there is
"version GLIBC_2.29 not found", thrown by iemlib. It means it may have been built against a more recent version of libm than what is currently on the board. I am confused though, because I don't have a iamlib.l_arm file in my folder ... can you show the output of ls /root/Bela/projects/pd-externals/iemlib/iemlib* ? Either way, it would seem that the only way around this is to build it from source but I would expect that [unsig~] should still work because it's an abstraction and in fact it works for me with the most recent version of the Bela code. I see you are using an old-ish version there with Pd 0.48-2, while we are now shipping 0.51.

lokki have you tried prepending the library name?

I think the -path should take care of that. In fact it works for me with Bela's Pd 0.51: iemlib's library of externals is not loaded because of said error, which means that the spares_FIR~ external won't work , but the iemlib's abstraction [unsig~] loads and so does moonlib's external [char2f].

@heliopolarthing I recommend you update your board's core code as explained here https://learn.bela.io/using-bela/bela-techniques/updating-bela/ and then try again and moonlib should work. Iemlib will need to be compiled. I can do that if you don't want to give it a try.

giuliomoro
It works !

I've finally find a mix between [declare WITH THE EXACT PATH] and importing abstractions directly in the project.
And I have 0 error message concerning librairies.

But.... I've a new one

I need to read and write a text file.

Please, is it possible to read and write a text file in Bela with pure data ?

Note, I since imported a float.txt in my project with the IDE.
I also simply changed the [apmasterfile $0-FloatPatterns p/float.txt] in my patch by [apmasterfile $0-FloatPatterns float.txt]
So 0 error now.

Just need to know if it is possible to store values in a text file ?

I'll test it tomorrow in my modular synth setup.