Download

• Copyright and Disclaimer
• Download Formats
• Current Release
• Old Releases
• Precompiled Binaries
• The Source Repository
• Building BRLTTY
• Android

Copyright and Disclaimer

BRLTTY is Copyright © 1995-2024 by The BRLTTY Developers.
It comes with NO WARRANTY.
This is free software, placed under the GNU Lesser General Public License, as published by the Free Software Foundation.

Download Formats

BRLTTY and BrlAPI can be downloaded in various archive formats. These formats can be identified by their file extensions.

Source archives, which contain everything, include:

.src.rpm

The format used for building binary packages for platforms such as Red Hat and Fedora.

.tar.gz

A tar archive compressed via gzip.

.tar.xz

A tar archive compressed via xz.

Binary formats which contain a full build include:

.apk

An Android package.

.exe

A Windows installer.

.zip

A full build for a Microsoft platform. If the file name begins with brltty-win- then it's for Windows. If the file name is brlttynn (or, in some cases, brlttnnn) then it's for DOS.

There are two variants for each Windows installer (.exe) and Windows binary archive (.zip). This is necessary because there are two ways to access USB devices on Windows.

LibUSB

The older, Win32-based interface. The version component of the file name ends with -libusb.

LibUSB-1.0

The newer, WinUSB-based interface. The version component of the file name ends with -libusb-1.0.

Binary builds for some distributions are split into several packages in order to facilitate minimizing the dependency on external components. Binary formats for these partial-build packages include:

.i386.rpm

A 32-bit Intel 386-compatible package for platforms such as Red Hat and Fedora.

.i686.rpm

A 32-bit Intel 686-compatible package for platforms such as Red Hat and Fedora.

.noarch.rpm

An architecture-independent package for platforms such as Red Hat and Fedora.

.x86_64.rpm

A 64-bit Intel package for platforms such as Red Hat and Fedora.

Partial build packages include:

brlapi

The BrlAPI client library.

brlapi-devel

C headers and a run-time library that facilitate software development using BrlAPI client code.

brlapi-java

Java bindings for BrlAPI.

brlapi-ocaml

OCaml bindings for BrlAPI.

brlapi-python

Python bindings for BrlAPI.

brlapi-tcl

TCL bindings for BrlAPI.

brlapi-utils

Commands that perform various BrlAPI-related functions.

brltty

The core, braille and speech drivers that have no external dependencies, the Linux screen driver, and the BrlAPI server.

brltty-braille-brlapi

The BrlAPI braille driver.

brltty-braille-xwindow

The XWindow braille driver.

brltty-devel

C headers and a run-time library that facilitate software development using BRLTTY code.

brltty-screen-atspi

The AtSpi screen driver.

brltty-screen-atspi2

The AtSpi2 screen driver.

brltty-screen-screen

The Screen screen driver.

brltty-speech-espeak

The eSpeak speech driver.

brltty-speech-festival

The Festival speech driver.

brltty-speech-flite

The Festival Lite speech driver.

brltty-speech-speechd

The Speech Dispatcher speech driver.

brltty-systemd

Units that allow BRLTTY processes to be managed by Systemd.

brltty-udev

Rules that allow BRLTTY processes to be manged by Udev.

brltty-utils

Commands that perform various BRLTTY-related functions.

Current Release

The current production version of BRLTTY is 6.7 (October 15, 2024). It can be downloaded in the following formats:

The current production version of BrlAPI is 0.8.6 (October 15, 2024). It can be downloaded in the following formats:

After downloading the package, install it as follows:

.tar.*

This flavour of the package contains the source and documentation in a form which can be built on any system. To unpack the archive, do:

bzip2

tar -xjf brltty-release.tar.bz2

gzip

tar -xzf brltty-release.tar.gz

xz

tar -xJf brltty-release.tar.xz

To configure, compile, and install it, see Building BRLTTY.

.arch.rpm

This flavour of the package contains the compiled binaries and documentation in RedHat Package Manager format. To install or upgrade it, do:

      rpm -Uvh brltty-release-version.arch.rpm
      

.src.rpm

This flavour of the package contains the source and documentation in RedHat Package Manager format. To build it, do:

      rpm -ivh brltty-release-version.src.rpm
      rpm -bi brltty-release-version
      

After installing the package, be sure to read its README file.

If you try BRLTTY, do leave us a note! We would like to know who the users of BRLTTY are.

Precompiled Binaries

This site offers binary packages for the later releases of BRLTTY. See the Current Release and the Old Releases subsections of this page.

Debian packages for BRLTTY can be found at http://deb.debian.org/debian/pool/main/b/brltty/.

The Source Repository

BRLTTY is developed within a source repository on GitHub. You can access the repository yourself if you have the git client. To download and/or learn how to use the git client, go to [http://git-scm.com/].

If your distribution provides it (most do) then you should get it from them:

• For Fedora-based systems: dnf install git
• For Debian-based systems: apt install git

The repository is at [https://github.com/brltty/brltty]. Here are a few simple things that you can do:

• To obtain your own local copy of the latest development source, do:

  git clone https://github.com/brltty/brltty.git

  If it doesn't work then try one of these alternate commands:
  • git clone http://github.com/brltty/brltty.git
  • git clone git://github.com/brltty/brltty.git
  This will create the directory brltty in your current working directory.
• If you'd prefer for your local copy to be placed somewhere else then specify the path (relative or absolute) to the desired directory as an additional command line argument.

  git clone https://github.com/brltty/brltty.git path-to-location

  Note that this directory needn't already exist. The best is for it either to be empty or for it to not already exist.
• To pick up the latest changes from that point on, go to the top-level directory of your local copy and do:

  git pull origin

• To display a list of all of the releases of BRLTTY which are in the repository, do:

  git tag

• To switch to a specific release, do:

  git checkout <release-name>

  For example:

  git checkout BRLTTY-6.3

• To switch back to the latest development code, do:

  git checkout master

Building BRLTTY

The following instructions assume that you've changed your current working directory to the top level of BRLTTY's source tree.

The following basic steps, in order, prepare, configure, build, and install BRLTTY. Each of them will be described in detail below.

1. ./autogen
2. Tools/reqpkgs -i
3. ./configure -q
4. make -s
5. make -s install

The autogen script needs at least the following:

autoconf 2.65

If the default Autoconf on your system is too old then assign whatever command will invoke a sufficiently new Autoconf to the environment variable BRLTTY_AUTOCONF.

export BRLTTY_AUTOCONF=path-to-autoconf

tcl 8.6

The tCL shell needs to be within your command search path ($PATH) and must be named tclsh. If it's in a different place on your system then adjust the path in the first line of the gendeps script as needed.

The configure script generates an enormous amount of output. We recommend, therefore, that you use its --quiet (-q) option so that you won't miss warnings and errors. If you need to see any of the details then look in config.log.

The make command generates an enormous amount of output. We recommend, therefore, that you use its --silent (-s) option so that you won't miss warnings and errors. You can get the same effect by setting this environment variable:

export MAKEFLAGS=s

./autogen

If you're starting from a checked out branch from the development repository, you must first generate the initial set of derived files. To do this, run:

./autogen

• This step has already been done if you're starting with a downloaded archive.
• Prior to release 3.8, this script was named autogen.sh.

Tools/reqpkgs -i

This optional step installs all of the additional packages (that we know about) that are required for a successful build of BRLTTY. It needs to be run as root (or via sudo) on most platforms. The command's name - reqpkgs means required packages, and its -i option means install the missing packages. Alternatively, you can:

• Use the -l option to list the missing packages.

• Not specify any option to just see how many packages are missing.

./configure -q

This step is only supported as of release 3.1. For earlier releases, carefully edit the top-level Makefile.

A number of platform-specific wrappers to the configure script are provided. As of the time this is being written, they are:

• cfg-android
• cfg-darwin
• cfg-dos
• cfg-grub
• cfg-iris
• cfg-windows

Each of the wrappers passes the best set of options to the configure script for its corresponding platform. If one is provided for your platform, therefore, we recommend that you use it to configure BRLTTY. All of the options given to any of the wrappers are passed through, unmodified, to the configure script so you can still do additional customization.

make -s

The following components are built:

• The brltty binary.

• The braille, speech, and screen drivers.

• The brltty-* binaries.

• The xbrlapi binary.

• The BrlAPI client library and configured bindings.

make -s install

The following components are installed:

• The brltty binary, configuration file, man page, and headers.

• The braille, speech, and screen drivers.

• The text, contraction, and attributes tables.

• The braille device (input) and keyboard key tables.

• The brltty-* commands.

• The message catalogs.

• The package configuration file.

• The xbrlapi binary and man page.

• The X11 and gdm startup scripts.

• The BrlAPI client library, configured bindings, headers, man pages, and access key.

These additional make targets are provided:

Additional Install Targets

install-appstream	The AppStream metadata.
install-messages	The message catalogs.
install-polkit	The Polkit rules.
install-systemd	The Systemd units.
install-udev	The Udev rules.
install-extras	All of the above.