See also SuperCollider FAQ.

1. Why do i get "ERROR: Primitive '_FilePutString' failed." when starting sclang or compiling synthdefs?
2. How do i compile scsynth plugins on the command line?

Why do i get "ERROR: Primitive '_FilePutString' failed." when starting sclang or compiling synthdefs?

sclang requires a `synthdefs' folder in the directory you start it from. You can do either of the following:

• Run sclang from the `build' directory in the distribution
• Create a `synthdefs' directory in sclang's working directory
• Pass the `-d' option to sclang to change to another directory (which should contain a `synthdefs' folder)
• When using SCEL, customize the emacs lisp variable `sclang-runtime-directory'

e.g. I put all my SC related files in `~/SuperCollider' which contains a `synthdefs' subdirectory; i've set `sclang-runtime-directory' to "~/SuperCollider" accordingly.

How do i compile scsynth plugins on the command line?

When no makefile or scons script is provided, the following is required for building a binary plugin:

• When building SC, pass DEVELOPMENT=1 to scons
• Set the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable, e.g. export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig:/usr/lib/pkgconfig
• Compile the plugin: g++ `pkg-config –cflags libscsynth` -shared -o FILE.so FILE.cpp
• Put the plugin somewhere in the search path (see extension paths)