[LV2] Lost due to no documentation on writing LV2 hosts

[Juan Linietsky]

Hi Harry,

  Sorry, I should have mentioned I did read the LV2 plugin documentation
but it's still not enough for me to "connect the dots".  I know it works
great for copying and pasting some code and getting something to work even
if the full API is not clear. Unfortunately for hosts this won't do.

  In any case, again, my point is to humbly request documentation about
this.  I'm sure someone experiencedcan put something together in an hour
and it would save me and future host implementers a huge amount of time.

  I hope you guys understand that Linux is rarely a priority for host
developers, which means little time can be dedicated to it.  By making it
so difficult to understand how a LV2 host works, you are just making people
not even considering spending time with it.

Best

Juan


On Sun, May 6, 2018 at 5:39 AM Harry van Haaren <harryhaaren at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On Sun, May 6, 2018 at 12:55 AM, Juan Linietsky <reduzio at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi, I don't know anything about LV2, and I only have very little time
>> available out of which I would like to port a sequencer I'm working on to
>> use it.
>>
>
> Hi Juan,
>
> We all started as LV2-beginners at some point :) Do you have a link to the
> sequencer? I'm always curious to hear about projects.
>
>
>> Unfortunately, there seems to be no documentation at all on writing
>> hosts, save for a reference on Lilv, which I can't make any sense of due to
>> me being completely unfamiliar with the naming conventions and context.
>> There are reference server implementations, but they don't really make any
>> sense either to me due to complete lack of exposure to LV2, it's
>> conventions and supported functions.
>>
>
> Although it can be hard to "flip" at first, the plugin documentation can
> be helpful, as the host does the "flip side" of the actions. I'll agree
> that if starting from zero can be hard, particularly if you have to flip
> the APIs to host side while learning.
>
>
>> I would really like to request documentation written similar to this -
>> http://lv2plug.in/book/  but seen entirely from the host side. If this
>> could be done, I would enormously appreciated.
>>
>
> Agreed that the book is a fantastic resource to learn plugin coding!
>
> I won't speak for the quality of the code here (it was written a long time
> ago, and I'd hope I've improved since... :) but there is a sample LV2 host
> class here: https://github.com/harryhaaren/Lv2Host
>
> I hadn't looked at it in years - but testing just now it still compiles
> and runs the default testing plugin ArtyFX Roomy without warnings. That
> said, a quick poke with valgrind shows that there are improvements possible
> - so please don't copy-paste this verbatim and expect it to work right :)
>
>
>> And again, please don't insist on telling me to go read a reference or
>> source code. As I mentioned, that takes way more time than I currently have
>> for working on this. I believe documentation should be equally good for
>> both hosts and plugin, even if there are less hosts written than plugins.
>>
>
> I understand nobody has infinite time - but if you're really under time
> pressure think about if LV2 is really the right thing to ramp-up and learn
> about. When working with new / unfamiliar libraries and code we programmers
> just aren't as efficient as when we're working in our comfort zone :D
>
>
>>
>> Best
>> Juan
>>
>
> Hope the above helps! -Harry
>
> --
>
> http://www.openavproductions.com
>
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