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

[Chris Cannam]

On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 5:11 PM, Ralf Mardorf<ralf.mardorf at alice-dsl.net> wrote:
> Chris Cannam wrote:
>>
>> Well, I suppose the user might want the older-installed version to
>> take priority.
>
> Sorry, if I should miss the thread, but I randomly read the latest mail.
>
> I'm using Linux and Windows and I like the behaviour for VST versions (on
> Windows). Even if an old and new version have the same name, I can rename
> the .dll for an VST on Windows and I have an old version plus the newer
> version with a new name.

The difficulty with this for the common Linux plugin formats is that
the plugin itself specifies how it should be labelled on menus, etc.

So if you rename the plugin library, you may well get two different
versions of the plugin both loadable at once (I think this works in my
hosts, anyway) but the host will have to do something "clever" before
you can distinguish between them in your plugin selector.  (For
example, Sonic Visualiser will append the library name after the
plugin name in the menu if the same plugin name is found in multiple
libraries.)

In principle this situation can happen even if the plugins are not the
same (two developers use the same description), so hosts really ought
to address it anyway, but I imagine it's not widely tested for.

For LADSPA hosts that identify plugins by "unique" ID, however, you're
probably screwed.  I think that's a terrible way to identify a plugin
even for a LADSPA-only host, but it's not uncommon.


Chris