Ardour in KXStudio repos?

[blockflute]

Following advice under a different topic I have installed Cadence via KXStudio repos in order to handle Pulse-Jack bridging. I have looked at the KX website and, though I believe it used to make Ardour available, it no longer appears to do so. However, I have had a system prompt offering an upgrade for my installed Ardour that looks like it wants to replace my A6 (from debian repos) with a presumably older A5 from the KX repos:

Code: Select all

$ apt-cache policy ardour
ardour:
  Installed: 1:6.5.0+ds0-1
  Candidate: 2:5.12.0-1kxstudio2v5
  Version table:
     2:5.12.0-1kxstudio2v5 500
        500 https://kx.studio/repo gcc5/free amd64 Packages
 *** 1:6.5.0+ds0-1 500
        500 http://deb.debian.org/debian testing/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     1:5.12.0-1kxstudio2 500
        500 https://kx.studio/repo stable/free amd64 Packages

Having installed Cadence ok should I now just remove the KXStudio repos from my system to avoid this kind of situation?

Thanks!

[LAM]

Hi @blockflute,
you can

Code: Select all

sudo apt-mark hold ardour

to avoid your Ardour 6 being "updated" with KXStudio Ardour 5.12.
When you you want to switch to the KXStudio version (for ex. when it will be updated) you can

Code: Select all

sudo apt-mark unhold ardour

and update normally.

[blockflute]

Thank you!

How does one know that Ardour is in the repos? I can't find any mention of it on the KX website.

[LAM]

Code: Select all

apt show -a ardour

will show every ardour package in the different repos.

[blockflute]

Sorry, I wasn't very clear there: how do I find out what else is in the KX repos? As I said, I can't find any mention of Ardour on their website. https://kx.studio/Repositories:Applications

[LAM]

If you use a package manager like Synaptic you can filter packages by origin, so you could see all the packages related to a repo, keep in mind that installing KXStudio repos create a few different "orgins".

In the CLI you can use grep on the *_Packages files in

Code: Select all

/var/lib/apt/lists/

[blockflute]

Thank you - I didn't realise the KX repos still pointed to a lot of Ubuntu stuff.

[sunrat]

Thank you - I didn't realise the KX repos still pointed to a lot of Ubuntu stuff.

KX Studios is a strange beast in that regard. Some internet advice says don't use PPAs on Debian but KX is generally compatible with Debian. I have quite a lot of plugins and applications from KX installed on Debian Bullseye. Currently the KX repo points to "bionic" so you can list packages installed from there (proving it's the only bionic repo) with

Code: Select all

aptitude search '?narrow(?installed, ?archive(bionic))'

You need aptitude installed, of course. There are many useful packages from KX repos so I'd never remove that.

Concerning Ardour, if you apt-mark hold it will never update from its current version. Better to pin it with apt preferences. Create a file in /etc/apt/preferences.d/ called 99ardour with something like:

Code: Select all

# Never prefer Ardour from KX repo
Package: ardour
Pin: origin kx.studio
Pin-Priority: 1

I always find apt preferences to require a little voodoo.
I just did this on my Bullseye system which had the KX version installed and still had to force the version to make it upgrade over as apt considered it a downgrade. The preferences should keep Ardour from Debian in future upgrades, hopefully.
I also pinned Ardour to highest priority from Debian but that's probably not necessary along with the KX prefs file.

Code: Select all

# Prefer Ardour from Debian repo
Package: ardour
Pin: release o=Debian
Pin-Priority:1001

[LAM]

Concerning Ardour, if you apt-mark hold it will never update from its current version.

This is true, however given all the problems in Ardour 6.6 version I prefer to hold the ardour package to 6.5 and avoid to update automatically when the update will hit the Debian repo.

[sunrat]

Concerning Ardour, if you apt-mark hold it will never update from its current version.

This is true, however given all the problems in Ardour 6.6 version I prefer to hold the ardour package to 6.5 and avoid to update automatically when the update will hit the Debian repo.

Debian Bullseye is frozen now so it probably won't be updated until Bookworm, the next release. If you use Testing Ardour may update sooner but I wouldn't use Testing for production.

[LAM]

I'm on sid, so when I find a "stable" version I'll keep that.

[sunrat]

I'm on sid,

Brave! I used sidux > aptosid > siduction since 2008, but recently switched to Bullseye.

[blockflute]

Hidden intricacies of apt that were formerly unknown to me! Thanks for all the info - I don't wish to sound sycophantic but I think this is the most helpful forum I've ever used.

I've actually removed the KXS repositories. All I really wanted to do was try out Cadence - as far as audio stuff goes, all I need is to be able to run Ardour with Jack and have pulse audio bridged while Jack is running. Cadence was recommended elsewhere on this forum. I had a brief dalliance with Kubuntu and tried Studio Controls which did the bridging automatically, but SC not in Debian repos. I tried Cadence and, for whatever reason, although it said the bridge was running I could not get any PA sound. Using Qjackctl with AVL's scripts works perfectly so that is that problem solved, and I might use the info above to freeze Ardour at 6.5 if 6.6 has problems.

[LAM]

@blockflute,
glad to hear you have your setup working, I use Qjackctl too.

The @sunrat apt pinning solution is what I used in the past and it's surely a more "elegant" solution.

Anyway since I started exploring the linux audio realms I found out that using an "unstable" distro for audio production has its pros and cons and require some little extra attention.

KXStudio repos work good on Debian, and I would not renounce at having all the goodies it has (updated audio plugins and apps), except for some software that is not yet updated (see Ardour or Surge synth). Hopefully this will change soon as FalkTx will take some time to update these packages.
You can see what's going on KXStudio stuff here: https://board.kx.studio

The solution of holding a package is what worked for me in a distro that is updated quite often, apt pinning is an alternative that could very well work for stable distros, you could very well use a mix of theses two techniques if you wish.

[sunrat]

I tried Cadence and, for whatever reason, although it said the bridge was running I could not get any PA sound. Using Qjackctl with AVL's scripts works perfectly so that is that problem solved, and I might use the info above to freeze Ardour at 6.5 if 6.6 has problems.

I also ditched Cadence for Qjackctl some time ago. It just does some things Cadence doesn't, particularly running commands at startup and shutdown is easy. I couldn't do without Carla from KX. It's a plugin host which can run standalone or as a LV2 plugin itself within a DAW so you can host some plugins the DAW doesn't recognise or create plugin chains.
And as I said above, Ardour probably won't be updated in Bullseye, only Bookworm or Sid. It wouldn't hurt to hold its version with pinning or apt-mark but most likely not essential.