sudo apt-get install libasound-dev
You might need to use yum, or some other package manager, instead of apt-get on your machine. If you do not install ALSA then you might get a message when testing that says you have no audio devices.
You can find out more about ALSA here: http://www.alsa-project.org/
./configure && make
That will build PortAudio using Jack, ALSA and OSS in whatever combination they are found on your system. For example, if you have Jack and OSS but not ALSA, it will build using Jack and OSS but not ALSA. This step also builds a number of tests, which can be found in the bin directory of PortAudio. It's a good idea to run some of these tests to make sure PortAudio is working correctly.
make install
Projects built this way will expect PortAudio to be installed on target systems in order to run. If you want to build a more self-contained binary, you may use the libportaudio.a file:
cp lib/.libs/libportaudio.a /YOUR/PROJECT/DIR
You may also need to copy portaudio.h, located in the include/ directory of PortAudio into your project. Note that you will usually need to link with the approriate libraries that you used, such as ALSA and JACK, as well as with librt and libpthread. For example:
gcc -lrt -lasound -ljack -lpthread -o YOUR_BINARY main.c libportaudio.a
PaAlsaStreamInfo/PaAlsa_InitializeStreamInfo:: Objects of the !PaAlsaStreamInfo type may be used for the !hostApiSpecificStreamInfo attribute of a !PaStreamParameters object, in order to specify the name of an ALSA device to open directly. Specify the device via !PaAlsaStreamInfo.deviceString, after initializing the object with PaAlsa_InitializeStreamInfo.
PaAlsa_EnableRealtimeScheduling:: PA ALSA supports real-time scheduling of the audio callback thread (using the FIFO pthread scheduling policy), via the extension PaAlsa_EnableRealtimeScheduling. Call this on the stream before starting it with the enableScheduling parameter set to true or false, to enable or disable this behaviour respectively.
PaAlsa_GetStreamInputCard:: Use this function to get the ALSA-lib card index of the stream's input device.
PaAlsa_GetStreamOutputCard:: Use this function to get the ALSA-lib card index of the stream's output device.
Of particular importance is PaAlsa_EnableRealtimeScheduling, which allows ALSA to run at a high priority to prevent ordinary processes on the system from preempting audio playback. Without this, low latency audio playback will be irregular and will contain frequent drop-outs.
On linux build, use e.g. "libtool gdb bin/patest_sine8" to debug that program. This is because on linux bin/patest_sine8 is a libtool shell script that wraps bin/.libs/patest_sine8 and allows it to find the appropriate libraries within the build tree.