Auto-connect JACK ports as they appear and when they match the port patterns given on the command line or read from a file.
jack-matchmaker is a small command line utility that listens to port
registrations by JACK clients and connects these ports when their names match
one of the port pattern pairs given on the command line at startup.
jack-matchmaker never disconnects any ports.
The port name patterns are specified as pairs of positional arguments or read from a file (see below) and by default are always interpreted as Python regular expressions, where the first pattern of a pair is matched against both output (readable) ports and input (writeable) ports, and the second pattern of a pair is matched only against input ports. As many pattern pairs as needed can be given.
If the first pattern matches an input port, all output ports connected to that input port will be connected to the input ports matching the second pattern.
Patterns are matched against:
- normal port names
- port aliases
- pretty-names set in the port meta data
You can run jack-matchmaker -oian to list all available output and input
ports with their aliases and pretty-names.
Before you install the software, please refer to the section "Requirements".
Then simply do:
$ pip install jack-matchmaker
There is also an AUR package available for Arch Linux users.
Run jack-matchmaker -h (or --help) to show help on the available command
line options.
See also the section "Systemd service" below on how to use jack-matchmaker as
a systemd user service.
Automatically connect the first two ports of Fluidsynth to the audio outs using exact matching mode:
$ jack-matchmaker -e \
fluidsynth:l_01 system:playback_1 \
fluidsynth:r_01 system:playback_2
Both the output port and the input port patterns can be regular expressions. If a match is found on an output port, the matching port will be connected to all input ports, which match the corresponding input port pattern:
$ jack-matchmaker \
'fluidsynth:l_\d+' 'system:playback_[13]' \
'fluidsynth:r_\d+' 'system:playback_[24]'
You can also use named regular expression groups in the output port pattern and fill the port name sub-strings they match to into placeholders in the input port pattern:
$ jack-matchmaker \
'system:midi_capture_(?P<num>\d+)$' 'mydaw:midi_in_track_{num}'
Automatically connect all ports going to the system output to an FFmpeg recording instance as well:
$ jack-matchmaker \
'system:playback_(?P<num>\d+)$' 'ffmpeg:input_{num}'
By default port name patterns are always interpreted as Python regular expressions and are matched against port names, aliases and pretty-names using case-sensitive matching. They are anchored to the start of the string they match, i.e. they must match the start of the port name, but they still match, if the port name continues after the part the pattern matches.
E.g. the pattern client:out_\d matches client:out_1, client:out_2 etc.
and also client:out_10 (even though the trailing zero is not included in the
pattern), but does not match otherclient:out_1.
You can still match port names with arbitrary prefixes by using .* at the
start of the pattern, e.g. .*client:out_\d.
To anchor the pattern to the end of the matched string as well, use a $ at
the end of the pattern. E.g client:out_[12]$ will match client:out_1 and
client:out_2, but not client:out_10, client:out_21 etc.
To use exact string matching instead of regular expression matching, use the
-e, --exact-matching command line option. When this option is given,
patterns must match port names (or aliases or pretty-names) exactly. You can
still use regular expression patterns by enclosing a pattern in forward
slashes, e.g. like so:
$ jack-matchmaker -e system:capture_1 '/myclient:in_l_\d+/'
All this applies to patterns given as positional command line arguments and to patterns listed in a pattern file (see below).
An output port pattern can contain one or more named groups with the syntax
(?P<name>...), where the three dots represent a sub regular expression. The
part of the port name matched by this sub regex, is available as a substitution
value for a placeholder corresponding to the name of group in the input port
pattern. Placeholders use the Python string formatting syntax.
Example:
$ jack-matchmaker \
'mysynth:out_(?P<channel>[lr])_\d+$' 'myfx:in_{channel}$'
This would connect all ports named mysynth:out_l_1, mysynth:out_l_2 and so
on to myfx:in_l and all ports named mysynth:out_r_1, mysynth:out_r_2 and
so on to myfx:in_r.
In addition to or instead of listing port patterns as as positional arguments on the command line, port patterns can also be put in a textfile.
The -p, --pattern-file option instructs the program to read the patterns
from the file path given as the option value. The file must list one port
pattern per line, where the first line of every pair of two lines specifies the
output port pattern, and the second specifies the input port pattern. Empty
lines and lines starting with a hash-sign (#) are ignored and whitespace at
the start of the end of each line is stripped.
Example file:
# Left channel
# This will match output ports of any client named
# 'out_1', 'out_l', 'output_1' or 'output_l'
.*:out(put)?_(1|l)$
system:playback_1
# Right channel
# This will match output ports of any client named
# 'out_2', 'out_r', 'output_2' or 'output_r'
.*:out(put)?_(2|r)$
system:playback_2
# Another common naming scheme for output ports:
.*:Out L
system:playback_1
.*:Out R
system:playback_2
Set up your JACK connections using GUI tools like QJackCtl or Carla first.
Then use jack-matchmaker -c > patterns to save a the current JACK connections
in the file patterns in a pattern file compatible format. You may then edit
this file and and delete or add pattern pairs as needed.
When using the -c option, you can also optionally give one or more regular
expression patterns as positional arguments on the command line. In that case
only connections, where any of the given patterns is matching (part of) either
the output or input port names, are listed. If the patterns contain any
uppercase letters, they will be matched in a case-sensitive fashion, if not,
they will be matched case-insensitively. The patterns are matched against the
full port name, including the client name. For example:
$ jack-matchmaker -c JACK
This would list connections, where one of the connected ports contains "JACK" in its name, but not if it contained only "jack" or "Jack" (unless matched by another pattern).
When you send a HUP signal to a running jack-matchmaker process, the file
that was specified on the command line when the process was started is re-read
and the resulting patterns replace all previously used patterns (including
those listed as positional command line arguments!). If there should be an
error reading the file, the pattern list will then be empty.
On systemd you can use systemctl --user reload jack-matchmaker to reload the
pattern file.
jack-matchmaker needs a connection to a running JACK server to be notified
about new ports. On start-up it tries to connect to JACK until a connection can
be established or the maximum number of connection attempts is exceeded. This
number can be set with the command line option -m, --max-attempts, which
defaults to 0 (i.e. infinite attempts or until interrupted).
jack-matchmaker waits for 3 seconds between each connection attempt by
default. Change this interval with the option -I, --connect-interval.
When jack-matchmaker is connected and the JACK server is stopped, the
shutdown event is signaled to jack-matchmaker, which then enters the
connection loop described above again.
To disconnect from the JACK server and stop jack-matchmaker, send an INT
signal to the process, usually done by pressing Control-C in the terminal where
jack-matchmaker is running.
You can optionally install jack-matchmaker as a systemd user service:
$ install -Dm644 systemd/jack-matchmaker.conf /etc/conf.d/jack-matchmaker
$ install -Dm644 systemd/jack-matchmaker.service -t /usr/lib/systemd/user
To start the service, edit /etc/conf.d/jack-matchmaker according to your
needs (see section "Environment file" below) and then start the service with:
$ systemctl --user start jack-matchmaker
To stop it again:
$ systemctl --user stop jack-matchmaker
To reload the pattern file:
$ systemctl --user reload jack-matchmaker
The jack-matchmaker systemd user service reads an environment file, which is
expected to be located at /etc/conf.d/jack-matchmaker. In this file, you can
set the following service startup settings as environment variables:
PATTERN_FILE (default: "/etc/jack-matchmaker/patterns.txt")
A file with port pattern pairs to read at startup as described above in section "Pattern files".
PATTERNS
A space-separated list of port patterns in pairs of two. The default list is
empty and it is recommened to use PATTERN_FILE instead when running
jack-matchmaker as a systemd service, unless the patterns should remain
static and never change.
CLIENT_NAME (default: "jack-matchmaker")
Set the JACK client name used by jack-matchnmaker to the given value.
CONNECT_INTERVAL (default: 3)
Set the interval in seconds between attempts to connect to JACK server to the given numeric value.
EXACT_MATCHING
Enable literal matching mode. Patterns must match port names exactly. To still
use regular expressions, surround a port pattern with forward slashes, e.g.
"/system:out_\d+/".
Set EXACT_MATCHING to any value to enable it.
MAX_ATTEMPTS (default: 0)
Set the maximum number of attempts to connect to JACK server before giving up.
The default value 0 means to keep on trying until interrupted.
VERBOSITY (default: INFO)
Set output verbosity level. Choices are: DEBUG, INFO, WARNING, and
ERROR.
- A version of Python 3 with a
ctypesmodule (i.e. PyPy 3 works too) - pyjacklib
- cachetools
- JACK version 1 or 2
- Linux, OS X (untested) or Windows (untested, no signal handling)
jack-matchmaker is licensed under the GNU Public License Version v2.
Please see the file LICENSE for more information.
jack-matchmaker was written by Christopher Arndt 2016 - 2023.
jack-matchmaker is written in Python and depends on the pyjacklib module,
which was originally taken from falkTX's Cadence application but now turned
into a stand-alone Python package and was heavily modified and extended in
the process.
It was inspired by jack-autoconnect, which also auto-connects JACK ports, but doesn't support port aliases or meta data pretty-names. jack-autoconnect is also written in C++, and therefore probably faster and less memory hungry.
The idea to read ports (patterns) from a file and re-read them on the HUP signal was "inspired" by aj-snapshot.
There is also a similar tool called jack-plumbing, part of the jack-tools
package on popular Linux distributions.
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