This guide is for updating an installation of Shairport Sync. If you installed Shairport Sync from a package, most of these instructions don't apply – please go to the section at the end called "Post Update Tasks"
To do an update, you basically have to go through the whole process of building Shairport Sync again, but a few steps are shorter because you've done them before; you won't have to reinstall the build tools or libraries needed, and you won't have to define the user and group or reconfigure the settings in the configuration file.
But before you begin, you should update and upgrade any packages.
Here is the sequence for Raspbian Stretch, which is based on Debian Stretch. The same commands work for Ubuntu, and maybe more. Here, a non-root user with sudo privileges is assumed.
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade
Next, stop playing music to your device.
Now, to update and install Shairport Sync, if you still have the directory in which you previously built Shairport Sync, it will contain the repository you originally downloaded. Navigate your way to it and 'pull' the changes from GitHub:
$ git pull
Otherwise – say if you deleted the repository – just pull Shairport Sync from GitHub again and move into the new directory:
$ git clone https://github.com/mikebrady/shairport-sync.git
$ cd shairport-sync
(If you wish to use the development branch, you should enter the command $ git checkout development at this point. Everything else is the same.)
Now, while in the shairport-sync directory, perform the following commands (note that there is a choice you must make in there):
$ autoreconf -fi
Please review the release notes to see if any configuration settings have been changed. For instance, in the transitions from version 2 to version 3, the --with-ssl=polarssl has been deprecated in favour of --with-ssl=mbedtls.
#The following is the standard configuration for a Linux that uses the alsa backend and systemd initialisation system:
$ ./configure --with-alsa --with-avahi --with-ssl=openssl --with-metadata --with-soxr --with-systemd --sysconfdir=/etc
#OR
#The following is the standard configuration for a Linux that uses the alsa backend and the older System V initialisation system:
$ ./configure --with-libdaemon --with-alsa --with-avahi --with-ssl=openssl --with-metadata --with-soxr --with-systemv --sysconfdir=/etc
$ make
$ sudo make install
At this point you have downloaded, compiled and installed the updated Shairport Sync. However, the older version is still running. So, you need to do a little more:
If you are on a systemd-based system such as Raspbian Jessie or recent versions of Ubuntu and Debian, execute the following commands:
$ sudo systemctl daemon-reload
$ sudo systemctl restart shairport-sync
Otherwise execute the following command:
$ sudo service shairport-sync restart
Your Shairport Sync should be upgraded now.
1 Unmute the Output Device Mixer (This applies only if you are using a hardware mixer for volume control.) Certain older versions of Shairport Sync could leave the output device mixer in a muted state after use to minimise the possibility of noise. However, this is not generally compatible with other audio players using the same device, as they would generally expect the device to be unmuted. Recent versions of Shairport Sync therefore do not use the mute facility by default. When you update Shairport Sync, the output device mixer might have been muted by the previous version, so you should unmute it, using, for instance, the following command:
$ sudo amixer sset <mixer_name> unmute
Alternatively you can use alsamixer. A muted output has the letter(s) M as its value. Select it and type M again to unmute.