Installation

You can use pip to install the jack module:

python3 -m pip install JACK-Client

Depending on your Python installation (see Requirements below), you may have to use python instead of python3. If you have installed the module already, you can use the --upgrade flag to get the newest release.

To un-install, use:

python3 -m pip uninstall JACK-Client

Requirements

You’ll need some software packages in order to install and use the jack module. Some of those might already be installed on your system and some are automatically installed when you use the aforementioned pip command.

Python:

Of course, you’ll need Python. More specifically, you’ll need Python 3. If you don’t have Python installed yet, you should get one of the distributions which already include CFFI and NumPy (and many other useful things), e.g. Anaconda or WinPython.

pip/setuptools:

Those are needed for the installation of the Python module and its dependencies. Most systems will have these installed already, but if not, you should install it with your package manager or you can download and install pip and setuptools as described on the pip installation page. If you happen to have pip but not setuptools, use this command:

python3 -m pip install setuptools

To upgrade to a newer version of an already installed package (including pip itself), use the --upgrade flag.

CFFI:

The C Foreign Function Interface for Python is used to access the C-API of the JACK library from within Python. It is supported on CPython and is distributed with PyPy. It will be automatically installed when installing the JACK-Client package with pip. If you prefer, you can also install it with your package manager (the package might be called python3-cffi or similar).

JACK library:

The JACK library must be installed on your system (and CFFI must be able to find it). Again, you should use your package manager to install it. Make sure you install the JACK daemon (called jackd). This will also install the JACK library package. If you don’t have a package manager, you can try one of the binary installers from the JACK download page. If you prefer, you can of course also download the sources and compile everything locally.

NumPy (optional):

NumPy is only needed if you want to access the input and output buffers in the process callback as NumPy arrays. The only place where NumPy is needed is jack.OwnPort.get_array() (and you can use jack.OwnPort.get_buffer() as a NumPy-less alternative). If you need NumPy, you can install it with your package manager or use a Python distribution that already includes NumPy (see above). You can also install NumPy with pip, but depending on your platform, this might require a compiler and several additional libraries:

python3 -m pip install NumPy