[LAD] Hello World in LV2

David Robillard d at drobilla.net
Wed Jul 6 18:11:27 UTC 2011


On Wed, 2011-07-06 at 18:27 +0200, Emanuel Rumpf wrote:
> 2011/7/6 David Robillard <d at drobilla.net>:
> >
> > ...  Eventually I think it might be nice to do a big "LV2 Universe"
> > tarball release of everything in there,
> >
> I can only say YES YES YES to that.
> Would you believe, how cumbersome it's been to track, follow and
> install LV2 releases ?
> (The same unfortunately applies to some of your other apps, ingen, ...)

Unreleased is unreleased.  On purpose.  Unreleased things are not
*supposed* to be as widely distributed as released things, because they
are not stable.  "Stable" in this case does not mean "it might crash",
it means that everything related will break catastrophically in the
future.  They are not useful unless you are a developer seeking to
participate in the implementation of a new extension, in which case you
use SVN.  There are all sorts of things in that repository that are
rotten crap and most definitely should NOT be widely distributed and
used.  If it was release suitable, it would be released :P

Extensions are not released until there are at least 2 independent
working implementations of them.  I think most would agree this is a
good rule.

For users, there are tarballs of all released extensions, and packagers
have been doing their thing nicely with them.  I don't see how it is any
more cumbersome to track LV2 releases than any other project.  Tarballs
are released, and announcements are made.  What is the problem?

> > .., but I am not sure
> > of the form this should take yet.
> >
> A tar.bz2 with any script, that would build and install the whole LV2
> devel stuff,
> including seldom used dependencies. Plus a README, listing additional
> dependencies.
> For example: I would not expect GTK+ to be included, but a required
> rdf-library I've never heard before...

... So, something like a waf script, and an INSTALL file, and a README
file?  Something like, oh I don't know, the ones that have been there
ever since the repository was created? ;)

> A second tarball, including all currently known LV2 plugins.
> This could be called  >>Official-LV2-plugin-pack_2011-08-01.tar.bz2<<
> and could be updated regularly.

I don't think it's appropriate or wise to create any such "official"
thing.  Plugins are written by diverse authors in diverse languages with
diverse build systems.  That's sort of the point.  Anyone is welcome to
create a meta-package, though, and it would be nice in some cases, but
that is a much more messy task than doing so for extensions, since there
is no standard format for plugin sources (nor could there be).

The scope of plugins is much wider than this wish implies.  For example,
LinuxSampler is a known LV2 plugin these days.  Ingen will be as well.
Including these things in such a release is clearly inappropriate.

I think actively maintaining, hosting, distributing, and guiding the
development of *extensions* is a job that lv2plug.in should strive to
do, to keep the LV2 ship sailing straight, so to speak.  Plugins,
however, are independent projects.  The point of a good plugin
specification is to enable independent developers to implement whatever
plugins they see fit.  Centralization is not a win.

> Thank you for this effort.

You're welcome.

> Making your work more accessible is much appreciated.

Don't assume that developers actually *want* everything to be
accessible ;)  I assure you several developers are actively working to
design, solidify, implement, and release new extensions that will
provide us with new advanced plugin capabilities as quickly as possible.

-dr




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