Building From Source

ALVR can be built on Windows and Linux. The following instructions are for both OSes.

Common prerequisites

Preferred IDE (optional): Visual Studio Code with rust-analyzer extension

You need to install rustup.

On Windows you need also Chocolatey.

Server build

First you need to gather some additional resources in preparation for the build.

If you are on Linux, install these additional packages:

• Arch

  sudo pacman -S clang curl nasm pkgconf yasm vulkan-headers libva-mesa-driver unzip ffmpeg

The alvr-git AUR package may also be used to do this automatically.

• Gentoo

  • media-video/ffmpeg >= 4.4 [encode libdrm vulkan vaapi]
  • sys-libs/libunwind
  • dev-lang/rust >= 1.51

• Nix(OS)

  Use the shell.nix in packaging/nix.

• Ubuntu / Pop!_OS 20.04

  sudo apt install build-essential pkg-config libclang-dev libssl-dev libasound2-dev libjack-dev libgtk-3-dev libvulkan-dev libunwind-dev gcc-8 g++-8 yasm nasm curl libx264-dev libx265-dev libxcb-render0-dev libxcb-shape0-dev libxcb-xfixes0-dev libspeechd-dev libxkbcommon-dev libdrm-dev

Move to the root directory of the project, then run this command (paying attention to the bullet points below):

cargo xtask prepare-deps --platform [your platform] [--gpl] [--no-nvidia]

• Replace [your platform] with your computer OS, either windows or linux
• Use the --gpl flag if you want to download, build and bundle FFmpeg inside the ALVR server. Keep in mind that on Windows this is needed only for software encoding; on Linux FFmpeg is always needed, and if you omit the --gpl flag, the system ffmpeg libraries will be used, which can cause compatibility issues at runtime. As the name suggest, if you use this flag you can only redistribute the final package as GPLv2.0 licensed (because of the x264 encoder).
• Use the flag --no-nvidia only on Linux and if you have an AMD gpu.
• This is not required if your Linux distribution includes Vulkan support in its ffmpeg package, like Arch (see above).

Next up is the proper build of the server. Run the following:

cargo xtask build-server --release [--gpl]

Again, the --gpl flag is needed only if you want to bundle FFmpeg.

You can find the resulting package in build/alvr_server_[your platform]

If you want to edit and rebuild the code, you can skip the prepare-deps command and run only the build-server command.

Client build

For the client you need install:

• Android Studio or the sdkmanager
• Platform Tools 29 (Android 10)
• Latest NDK (currently v25.1.8937393)
• Set the environment variable JAVA_HOME
  • For example on Windows: C:\Program Files\Android\Android Studio\jre
• Set the environment variable ANDROID_HOME
  • For example on Windows: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Android\Sdk
• Set the environment variable ANDROID_NDK_HOME
  • For example on Windows: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Android\Sdk\ndk\25.1.8937393

First you need to gather some additional resources in preparation for the build.
Move to the root directory of the project, then run this command:

cargo xtask prepare-deps --platform android

Next up is the proper build of the client. Run the following:

cargo xtask build-client --release

The built APK will be in build/alvr_client_quest. You can then use adb or SideQuest to install it to your headset.

To build and run:

cd alvr/client_openxr
cargo apk run

You need the headset to be connected via USB and with the screen on to successfully launch the debugger and logcat.

Troubleshooting (Linux)

On some distributions, Steam Native runs ALVR a little better. To get Steam Native on Ubuntu run it with:

env STEAM_RUNTIME=0 steam

On Arch Linux, you can also get all the required libraries by downloading the steam-native-runtime package from the multilib repository

sudo pacman -S steam-native-runtime

Dependencies might be missing then, so run:

cd ~/.steam/root/ubuntu12_32
file * | grep ELF | cut -d: -f1 | LD_LIBRARY_PATH=. xargs ldd | grep 'not found' | sort | uniq

Some dependencies have to be fixed manually for example instead of forcing a downgrade to libffi version 6 (which could downgrade a bunch of the system) you can do a symlink instead (requires testing):

cd /lib/i386-linux-gnu
ln -s libffi.so.7 libffi.so.6

and

cd /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu
ln -s libffi.so.7 libffi.so.6

A few dependencies are distro controlled, you can attempt to import the package at your own risk perhaps needing the use of alien or some forced import commands, but its not recommended (turns your system into a dependency hybrid mess), nor supported!