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

[Chris Cannam]

On Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 3:02 AM, Stefano D'Angelo<zanga.mail at gmail.com> wrote:
> * LADSPA header asks hosts to identify plugins by filename and label,
> which implies:
>  - two plugins with same UniqueID and/or label are different plugins (lame);
>  - files containing sessions/patches/etc. are not portable beetween
> different systems or different versions of the same system (lame).

I always interpreted "filename" as meaning base name (i.e. the bit
between the last "/" and the .so) myself, which avoids both of these
problems.

> * LV2 identifies plugins by URI, which means:
>  - in case of multiple plugins with the same URI someone has to decide
> which one to use - the host, maybe by choosing according to the
> discovery order (bad for the unaware end user, and maybe even
> inconsitent in case the two bundles are in the same directory) or the
> user (better, but maybe a bit harder to handle in support libraries
> like SLV2?).

I imagine LV2 requires that plugins with identical URIs should behave
identically.

> * DSSI header file does not specify how a DSSI plugin should be
> identified by the host

IIRC the RFC mentions filename+label (and includes a stern warning not
to use LADSPA "unique" IDs).

> * what about VAMP? (VampPluginDescriptor.identifier maybe??)

Library base name plus identifier (i.e. basically the same as my
interpretation of the LADSPA/DSSI case).

> * VAMP: default paths (we could use Vamp SDK's ones?).

A host would need a pretty good reason to do anything else; the paths
are documented, and all existing hosts use the SDK to load their
plugins from it anyway.


Chris