[LAD] Dumb Idea #27: LV2 host as kernel?

[David Robillard]

On Sat, 2009-02-21 at 14:55 -0500, Paul Davis wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 21, 2009 at 2:37 PM, Darren Landrum
> <darren.landrum at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>         If one were to build a "kernel" to a digital audio workstation
>         that was
>         itself a bare-bones LV2 host, could things like audio tracks,
>         midi
>         tracks, and mixer channels and the like be built as LV2
>         plug-ins? 


> if you want to understand why this is hard (not impossible, just
> hard), go read the ardour source code and find all the places where
> *unexpected* inter-object dependencies appear. then figure out how to
> remove them. if you can do that, you'll be able to make a modular
> system work. if not, you'll at least understand why nobody has else
> has been able to do it so far.

Exactly as hard as Jack doing transport...

Anyway, just because the signal flow aspect of things is patching
doesn't mean transport has to be.  There's no fundamental reason this is
any harder than it is to solve in Ardour.  Objects are objects at the
end of the day.  You could even do it by controlling the transport over
wires if you wanted to (messages are messages at the end of the day) but
it would be a huge mess you would want to hide from the user anyway, so
not a lot of point.

There's no technological reason this is infeasible or particularly
difficult, it's just a lot of work.

-dr