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+## Building
+
+PipeWire uses a build tool called [*Meson*](https://mesonbuild.com) as a basis for its build
+process. It's a tool with some resemblance to Autotools and CMake. Meson
+again generates build files for a lower level build tool called [*Ninja*](https://ninja-build.org/),
+working in about the same level of abstraction as more familiar GNU Make
+does.
+
+Meson uses a user-specified build directory and all files produced by Meson
+are in that build directory. This build directory will be called `builddir`
+in this document.
+
+Generate the build files for Ninja:
+
+```
+$ meson setup builddir
+```
+
+For distribution-specific build dependencies, please check our
+[CI pipeline](https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/blob/master/.gitlab-ci.yml)
+(search for `FDO_DISTRIBUTION_PACKAGES`). Note that some dependencies are
+optional and depend on options passed to meson.
+
+Once this is done, the next step is to review the build options:
+
+```
+$ meson configure builddir
+```
+
+Define the installation prefix:
+
+```
+$ meson configure builddir -Dprefix=/usr # Default: /usr/local
+```
+
+PipeWire specific build options are listed in the "Project options"
+section. They are defined in `meson_options.txt`.
+
+Finally, invoke the build:
+
+```
+$ meson compile -C builddir
+```
+
+Just to avoid any confusion: `autogen.sh` is a script invoked by *Jhbuild*,
+which orchestrates multi-component builds.
+
+## Running
+
+If you want to run PipeWire without installing it on your system, there is a
+script that you can run. This puts you in an environment in which PipeWire can
+be run from the build directory, and ALSA, PulseAudio and JACK applications
+will use the PipeWire emulation libraries automatically
+in this environment. You can get into this environment with:
+
+```
+$ ./pw-uninstalled.sh -b builddir
+```
+
+In most cases you would want to run the default pipewire daemon. Look
+below for how to make this daemon start automatically using systemd.
+If you want to run pipewire from the build directory, you can do this
+by doing:
+
+```
+cd builddir/
+make run
+```
+
+This will use the default config file to configure and start the daemon.
+The default config will also start `pipewire-media-session`, a default
+example media session and `pipewire-pulse`, a PulseAudio compatible server.
+
+You can also enable more debugging with the `PIPEWIRE_DEBUG` environment
+variable like so:
+
+```
+cd builddir/
+PIPEWIRE_DEBUG="D" make run
+```
+
+You might have to stop the pipewire service/socket that might have been
+started already, with:
+
+```
+systemctl --user stop pipewire.service \
+ pipewire.socket \
+ pipewire-media-session.service \
+ pipewire-pulse.service \
+ pipewire-pulse.socket
+```
+
+## Installing
+
+PipeWire comes with quite a bit of libraries and tools, run:
+
+```
+meson install -C builddir
+```
+
+to install everything onto the system into the specified prefix.
+Depending on the configured installation prefix, the above command
+may need to be run with elevated privileges (e.g. with `sudo`).
+Some additional steps will have to be performed to integrate
+with the distribution as shown below.
+
+### PipeWire daemon
+
+A correctly installed PipeWire system should have a pipewire
+process, a pipewire-media-session (or alternative) and an (optional)
+pipewire-pulse process running. PipeWire is usually started as a
+systemd unit using socket activation or as a service.
+
+Configuration of the PipeWire daemon can be found in
+`/usr/share/pipewire/pipewire.conf`. Please refer to the comments in the
+config file for more information about the configuration options.
+
+The daemon is started with:
+```
+systemctl --user start pipewire.service pipewire.socket
+```
+
+If you did not start the media-session in pipewire.conf, you will
+also need to start it like this:
+```
+systemctl --user start pipewire-media-session.service
+```
+To make it start on system startup:
+```
+systemctl --user enable pipewire-media-session.service
+```
+you can write ```enable --now``` to start service immediately.
+
+### ALSA plugin
+
+The ALSA plugin is usually installed in:
+
+On Fedora:
+```
+/usr/lib64/alsa-lib/libasound_module_pcm_pipewire.so
+```
+On Ubuntu:
+```
+/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/alsa-lib/libasound_module_pcm_pipewire.so
+```
+
+There is also a config file installed in:
+
+```
+/usr/share/alsa/alsa.conf.d/50-pipewire.conf
+```
+
+The plugin will be picked up by alsa when the following files
+are in `/etc/alsa/conf.d/`:
+
+```
+/etc/alsa/conf.d/50-pipewire.conf -> /usr/share/alsa/alsa.conf.d/50-pipewire.conf
+/etc/alsa/conf.d/99-pipewire-default.conf
+```
+
+With this setup, `aplay -l` should list a pipewire device that can be used as
+a regular alsa device for playback and record.
+
+### JACK emulation
+
+PipeWire reimplements the 3 libraries that JACK applications use to make
+them run on top of PipeWire.
+
+These libraries are found here:
+
+```
+/usr/lib64/pipewire-0.3/jack/libjacknet.so -> libjacknet.so.0
+/usr/lib64/pipewire-0.3/jack/libjacknet.so.0 -> libjacknet.so.0.304.0
+/usr/lib64/pipewire-0.3/jack/libjacknet.so.0.304.0
+/usr/lib64/pipewire-0.3/jack/libjackserver.so -> libjackserver.so.0
+/usr/lib64/pipewire-0.3/jack/libjackserver.so.0 -> libjackserver.so.0.304.0
+/usr/lib64/pipewire-0.3/jack/libjackserver.so.0.304.0
+/usr/lib64/pipewire-0.3/jack/libjack.so -> libjack.so.0
+/usr/lib64/pipewire-0.3/jack/libjack.so.0 -> libjack.so.0.304.0
+/usr/lib64/pipewire-0.3/jack/libjack.so.0.304.0
+
+```
+
+The provided `pw-jack` script uses `LD_LIBRARY_PATH` to set the library
+search path to these replacement libraries. This allows you to run
+jack apps on both the real JACK server or on PipeWire with the script.
+
+It is also possible to completely replace the JACK libraries by adding
+a file `pipewire-jack-x86_64.conf` to `/etc/ld.so.conf.d/` with
+contents like:
+
+```
+/usr/lib64/pipewire-0.3/jack/
+```
+
+Note that when JACK is replaced by PipeWire, the SPA JACK plugin (installed
+in `/usr/lib64/spa-0.2/jack/libspa-jack.so`) is not useful anymore and
+distributions should make them conflict.
+
+
+### PulseAudio replacement
+
+PipeWire reimplements the PulseAudio server protocol as a small service
+that runs on top of PipeWire.
+
+The binary is normally placed here:
+
+```
+/usr/bin/pipewire-pulse
+```
+
+The server can be started with provided systemd activation files or
+from PipeWire itself. (See `/usr/share/pipewire/pipewire.conf`)
+
+```
+systemctl --user start pipewire-pulse.service pipewire-pulse.socket
+```
+
+You can also start additional PulseAudio servers listening on other
+sockets with the `-a` option. See `pipewire-pulse -h` for more info.
+
+
+## Uninstalling
+
+To uninstall, run:
+
+```
+ninja -C builddir uninstall
+```
+
+Depending on the configured installation prefix, the above command
+may need to be run with elevated privileges (e.g. with `sudo`).
+
+Note that at the time of writing uninstallation only works with the
+same build directory that was used for installation. Meson stores the
+list of installed files in the build directory, and this list is
+necessary for uninstallation to work.