To build eSpeak NG on Windows, you will need:
- a copy of Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2015 or later, such as the Community Edition;
- the Windows 8.1 SDK;
- the WiX installer plugin;
- the pcaudiolib project checked out to
src
(assrc/pcaudiolib
).
Optionally, you need:
- sox (http://sox.sourceforge.net/) to enable audio output for SSML tag
NOTE: SAPI 5 voices are not currently available in this release of eSpeak NG. There is an issue to track support for this feature.
You can then open and build the src/windows/espeak-ng.sln
solution in Visual
Studio.
You can also use the Visual Studio tools to build espeak-ng with msbuild
from
the src/windows
directory:
msbuild espeak-ng.sln
To build with a specific version of Visual Studio, you need to use:
msbuild /p:PlatformToolset=v120 espeak-ng.sln
replacing v120
with the appropriate value for the target Visual Studio version:
PlatformToolset | Visual Studio |
---|---|
v120 | 2013 |
v140 | 2015 |
v141 (default) | 2017 |
In order to build eSpeak NG, you need:
- a functional autotools system (
make
,autoconf
,automake
,libtool
andpkg-config
); - a functional c compiler that supports C99 (e.g. gcc or clang). Note: if building with speechPlayer, a C++ compiler is required.
Optionally, you need:
- the pcaudiolib development library to enable audio output;
- the speechPlayer development library to enable the speechPlayer Klatt implementation;
- the sonic development library to enable sonic audio speed up support;
- the
ronn
man-page markdown processor to build the man pages. - sox (http://sox.sourceforge.net/) to enable audio output for SSML tag
To build the documentation, you need:
- the
kramdown
markdown processor.
On Debian-based systems such as Debian, Ubuntu and Mint, these dependencies can be installed using the following commands:
Dependency | Install |
---|---|
autotools | sudo apt-get install make autoconf automake libtool pkg-config |
c99 compiler | sudo apt-get install gcc |
sonic | sudo apt-get install libsonic-dev |
ronn | sudo apt-get install ronn |
kramdown | sudo apt-get install kramdown |
For recent Debian or Ubuntu >= 18.04 you should also install:
Dependency | Install |
---|---|
pcaudiolib | sudo apt-get install libpcaudio-dev |
The first time you build eSpeak NG, or when you want to change how to build eSpeak NG, you need to run the following standard autotools commands:
./autogen.sh
./configure --prefix=/usr
NOTE: The --prefix
option above will install the files to the /usr
directory, instead of the default /usr/local
location. You can use other
standard configure
options to control the output. For more information,
you can run:
./configure --help
To use a different compiler, or compiler flags, you can specify these before
the configure
command. For example:
CC=clang CFLAGS=-Wextra ./configure --prefix=/usr
The espeak-ng
and speak-ng
programs, along with the espeak-ng voices, can
then be built with:
make
NOTE: Building the voice data does not work when using the -jN
option.
If you want to use that option, you can run:
make -j8 src/espeak-ng src/speak-ng
make
The documentation can be built by running:
make docs
Specific languages can be compiled by running:
make LANG
where LANG
is the language code of the given language. More information can
be found in the Adding or Improving a Language
documentation.
If project settings are changed, you may need to force rebuilding all project, including already built files. To do this execute command:
make -B
Because the eSpeak NG build process uses the built program to compile the language and voice data, you need to build it locally first. Once you have built it locally you can perform the cross compilation using:
./configure --build=... --host=... --target=...
make -B src/espeak-ng src/speak-ng
It is possible to build eSpeak NG with the gcc or clang sanitizer by passing
the appropriate CFLAGS
and LDFLAGS
options to configure
. For example:
CFLAGS="-fsanitize=address,undefined -g" \
LDFLAGS="-fsanitize=address,undefined" \
CC=clang ./configure
make
make check
NOTE: The -fsanitize=fuzzer
option does not work when using the above
configuration method. This is because clang
will use the libFuzzer
library
which defines its own main
and requires LLVMFuzzerTestOneInput
to be
defined. This breaks the autoconf check to see if the C compiler works.
To enable libFuzzer support you need clang 6.0 or later. It is enabled with the following:
CC=clang ./configure --with-libfuzzer=yes
make
make check
The following configure
options control which eSpeak NG features are enabled:
Option | Description | Default |
---|---|---|
--with-klatt |
Enable Klatt formant synthesis. | yes |
--with-speechplayer |
Enable the speechPlayer Klatt implementation. | yes |
--with-mbrola |
Enable MBROLA voice support. | yes |
--with-sonic |
Use the sonic library to support higher WPM. | yes |
--with-async |
Enable asynchronous commands. | yes |
NOTE: The --with-sonic
option requires that the sonic library and header
is accessible on the system.
The following configure
options control which of the extended dictionary files
to build:
Option | Extended Dictionary | Default |
---|---|---|
--with-extdict-ru |
Russian | no |
--with-extdict-cmn |
Mandarin Chinese | no |
--with-extdict-yue |
Cantonese | no |
The extended dictionaries are taken from http://espeak.sourceforge.net/data/ and provide better coverage for those languages, while increasing the resulting dictionary size.
Before installing, you can test the built espeak-ng using the following command from the top-level directory of this project:
ESPEAK_DATA_PATH=`pwd` LD_LIBRARY_PATH=src:${LD_LIBRARY_PATH} src/espeak-ng ...
The ESPEAK_DATA_PATH
variable needs to be set to use the espeak-ng data from
the source tree. Otherwise, espeak-ng will look in $(HOME)
or
/usr/share/espeak-ng-data
.
The LD_LIBRARY_PATH
is set as espeak
uses the libespeak-ng.so
shared
library. This ensures that espeak
uses the built shared library in the
src
directory and not the one on the system (which could be an older
version).
You can install eSpeak NG by running the following command:
sudo make LIBDIR=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu install
NOTE: The LIBDIR
path may be different to the one on your system (the
above is for 64-bit Debian/Ubuntu releases that use the multi-arch package
structure -- that is, Debian Wheezy or later).
You can find out where espeak-ng is installed to on your system if you already have an espeak-ng install by running:
find /usr/lib | grep libespeak-ng
The espeak-ng sources contain the code for the Android™ port of the application. This is published as the eSpeak for Android program on the Google Play store. It is based on the eyes-free port of eSpeak to the Android platform. This code was originally maintained in a separate branch when the repository tracked eSpeak releases.
In order to build the Android APK file, you need:
- the Android Studio with API 26 support;
- the Android NDK;
- Gradle 7.4+
- JDK 11
-
Set the location of the Android SDK:
$ export ANDROID_HOME=<path-to-the-android-sdk>
(where <path-to-the-android-sdk>
is your actual path of SDK folder e.g. /home/user/Android/Sdk
)
-
Configure the project:
$ ./autogen.sh $ ./configure --with-gradle=<path-to-gradle>
Check that log shows following lines:
...
gradle (Android): gradle
...
<path-to-gradle>
may be just gradle
if it is found in your path by simple name.
-
Build the project:
$ make apk-release
This will create an android/build/outputs/apk/espeak-release-unsigned.apk
file.
In order to install the built APK you need to self-sign the package. You can do this by:
-
Creating a certificate, if you do not already have one:
$ keytool -genkey -keystore [YOUR_CERTIFICATE] -alias [ALIAS] -keyalg RSA -storetype PKCS12
-
Sign the package using your certificate:
$ jarsigner -sigalg MD5withRSA -digestalg SHA1 \ -keystore [YOUR_CERTIFICATE] \ android/build/outputs/apk/release/espeak-release-unsigned.apk [ALIAS]
-
Align the apk using the zipalign tool.
$ zipalign 4 android/build/outputs/apk/release/espeak-release-unsigned.apk \ android/build/outputs/apk/release/espeak-release-signed.apk
To open project in Android Studio select Import project (Gradle, Eclipse ADT, etc)
and select android
folder of the espeak-ng
project.
Then select menu File — Project Structure..., tab SDK Location, field Android NDK location
and set your location of NDK, e.g. /home/user/Android/Ndk
.
Now, you can install the APK using the adb
tool:
$ adb install -r android/build/outputs/apk/release/espeak-release-signed.apk
After running, eSpeakActivity
will extract the espeakdata.zip
file into its
own data directory to set up the available voices.
To enable eSpeak, you need to:
- go into the Android
Text-to-Speech settings
UI; - select
eSpeak TTS
as the default engine; - use the
Listen to an example
option to check if everything is working.