Installing the Versatile Commodore Emulator (VICE) on Raspberry Pi

Updated 2020-11-28: thanks, Ennio! Should now build after new Raspberry Pi OS and Vice changes

As requested on our local Commodore user group mailing list, how to install VICE on a Raspberry Pi running Raspberry Pi OS:

sudo apt install autoconf automake build-essential byacc dos2unix flex libavcodec-dev libavformat-dev libgtk2.0-cil-dev libgtkglext1-dev libmp3lame-dev libmpg123-dev libpcap-dev libpulse-dev libreadline-dev libswscale-dev libvte-dev libxaw7-dev subversion yasm libgtk3.0-cil-dev xa65 libsdl2-dev libsdl2-image-dev libgtk-3-dev libglew-dev

mkdir -p src

cd src

svn checkout https://svn.code.sf.net/p/vice-emu/code/trunk trunk

cd trunk/vice

./autogen.sh

./configure --disable-pdf-docs

make -j4

sudo make install

This was freely adapted from the build docs, Linux-Native-Howto.txt, which has more info if you get stuck.


If you’re feeling fancy and want nice GUI controls and sound recording and menu stuff, try

./configure --disable-pdf-docs  --enable-lame --with-mpg123 --enable-shared-ffmpeg --enable-x64 --enable-native-gtk3ui --enable-desktop-files

This will give you desktop icons too. I’m not sure in the apt line is quite right, though — but I’ve had my doubts about all those CIL entries, ‘cos I think they pull in Mono/.Net, and who would want to use that?

7 comments

  1. I install that today on a pi 3b+ with an up to date Raspbian stretch. I have an error at the end of the compilation.
    I have added : sudo apt-get install libsdl2-dev.

    Now all is ok

  2. Thanks, Ennio! The –disable-pdf-docs option keeps the size of the install way down: texinfo and all are several gigabytes in size.

    (who is this Steve fella tho?)

  3. Hi, first of all thank you very much for the instruction lines you posted, all over the web, they are the ONLY ones that work, it took a long time to install VICE, but in the end I did it thanks to your tutorial.
    Only thing, to me the emulator goes very slow, but really very slow that you can’t even write because of the lag ….
    what should I do? I didn’t want to install VICE via RETROVIE ….
    Thank you
    I have a Raspberry PI3 B+ (1GbRam)

  4. I don’t know what else you’re running. It was adequately fast for me on a 3B+, but I’m not too bothered about latency and refresh accuracy

  5. The only guide that worked for me. Thanks so much.
    One question. There is a window behind vice that reacts to any keypress made. Is there a way to stop this window loading with vice?
    Thanks again

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