Re: [LAD] RFC: Default discovery paths for LADSPA, LRDF, LV2 and DSSI (and more?)

2009/6/24 Chris Cannam <cannam@email-addr-hidden-day-breakfast.com>:
> On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 8:22 PM, David Robillard<dave@email-addr-hidden> wrote:
>> On Wed, 2009-06-24 at 17:55 +0200, Stefano D'Angelo wrote:
>>> Hereby I propose some default paths which could be used, in the hope
>>> that API authors lurking around here might want to recommend them and
>>> host authors might want to use them:
>>> [...]
>>
>> Note the order matters for PATH-like variables such as these.
>>
>> The LV2 discovery paths are documented here, FWIW:
>>
>> http://lv2plug.in/docs/index.php?title=Filesystem_Locations
>
> The DSSI documentation doesn't specify the path at all (sorry, Steve).
>
> For what it's worth:
>
> Rosegarden looks in ~/.dssi, /usr/local/lib/dssi and /usr/lib/dssi in
> that order.  Its default path for LADSPA is identical except with
> ladspa instead of dssi.
>
> The simple host in the DSSI distribution looks in /usr/local/lib/dssi,
> /usr/lib/dssi and ~/.dssi, in that order.  Yes, this is different from
> Rosegarden!  I could probably argue for either ordering, but I can't
> easily justify the discrepancy.  I suspect Rosegarden reflects my true
> preference here.

I am asking this to you as well, Chris, how does this kind of ordering
affect discovery?

> (I've never really got on with the idea of using ~/.ladspa instead of
> ~/ladspa -- these are perhaps substantial binary files, why hide them
> in a configuration directory? -- but it seemed to be widespread for
> LADSPA hosts at the time DSSI was thought up, so we copied it for the
> first DSSI hosts.)

IIRC Firefox lets you store plugins somewhere in ~/.mozilla, and WINE
places lots of stuff in ~/.wine... not that I say this is good or bad,
but it can maybe considered common practice??

[...]
> Sonic Visualiser, my only cross-platform LADSPA host so far, uses the
> same paths as Rosegarden on Linux.  On OS/X its LADSPA and DSSI paths
> are the same as those for Vamp above, but with LADSPA/DSSI (all caps)
> instead of Vamp.  On Windows, for LADSPA it looks in
> "%ProgramFiles%\\LADSPA Plugins" followed by
> "%ProgramFiles%\\Audacity\\Plug-Ins" (because many users will have
> effects originally installed for Audacity which IIRC loads them only
> from there) and for DSSI it looks in "%ProgramFiles%\\DSSI Plugins"
> only.

Defining default paths for plugins on Windows would allow
building/usage of installers and would let Audacity developers use
standard system- and user-wide directories :-)

We're also missing default paths for LADSPA and LRDF on Mac.

> In every case above, the default path is completely overridden by any
> value found in the relevant one of the LADSPA_PATH, DSSI_PATH or
> VAMP_PATH environment variables (colon-separated everywhere except on
> Windows where it is semicolon-separated).

This is fine and all mentioned APIs could use this scheme (probably
most hosts work like that already).

Look, I really don't care about specific default values, I just think
that having some is a good thing. Probably a little drop into the
ocean for the adoption of free APIs, yet a must have IMO.

Stefano
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Received on Thu Jun 25 08:15:02 2009