yabridge/CHANGELOG.md

# Changelog

All notable changes to this project will be documented in this file.

The format is based on [Keep a Changelog](https://keepachangelog.com/en/1.0.0/),
and this project adheres to [Semantic
Versioning](https://semver.org/spec/v2.0.0.html).

## [Unreleased]

TODO: Remove the mentions of VST3 support not yet being part of the released version from the readme
TODO: Add an updated screenshot with some fancy VST3-only plugins to the readme

### Added

- Yabridge 3.0 introduces the first ever true Wine VST3 bridge, allowing you to
  use Windows VST3 plugins in Linux VST3 hosts with full VST 3.7.1
  compatibility. Simply tell yabridgectl to look for plugins in
  `$HOME/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Common Files/VST3`, run `yabridgectl sync`,
  and your VST3 compatible DAW will pick up the new plugins in
  `~/.vst3/yabridge` automatically. Even though this feature has been tested
  extensively with a variety of VST3 plugins and hosts, there's still a large
  part of the VST 3.7.1 specification that none of the hosts or plugins we came
  across actually used, so please let me know if you run into any weird
  behaviour!
- Added the `with-vst3` compile time option to control whether yabridge should
  be built with VST3 support. This is enabled by default.
- Added an
  [option](https://github.com/robbert-vdh/yabridge#compatibility-options) to use
  Wine's XEmbed implementation instead of yabridge's normal window embedding
  method. Some plugins have will have redrawing issues when using XEmbed or the
  editor might not show up at all, so your mileage may very much vary.

### Changed

- `libyabridge.so` is now called `libyabridge-vst2.so`. If you're using
  yabridgectl then nothing changes here. **To avoid any confusion in the future,
  please remove the old `libyabridge.so` file before upgrading.**
- Slightly increased resposniveness when resizing plugin GUIs by preventing
  unnecessary blitting. This also reduces flickering with plugins that don't do
  double buffering.
- Window closing is now deferred. This means that when closing the editor
  window, the host no longer has to wait for Wine to fully close the window.
  Most hosts already do something similar themselves, so this may not make any
  difference in responsiveness.
- VST2 editor idle events are now handled slightly differently. This should
  result in even more responsive GUIs for VST2 plugins.
- Changed part of the build process considering [this Wine
  bug](https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=49138). Building with Wine 5.7
  and 5.8 required a change, but that change now breaks builds using Wine 6.0
  and up. The build process now detect which version of Wine is used to build
  with, and it then applies the change conditionally to be able to support
  building with both older and newer versions of Wine.

### Fixed

- The function for suspending and resuming audio, `effMainsChanged()`, is now
  always executed from the GUI thread. This fixes **EZdrummer** not producing
  any sound as it makes the incorrect assumption that `effMainsChanged()` is
  always called from the GUI thread.

### yabridgectl

- Updated for the changes in yabridge 3.0. Yabridgectl now allows you to set up
  yabridge for VST3 plugins. Since `libyabridge.so` got renamed to
  `libyabridge-vst2.so` in this version, it's advised to carefully remove the
  old `libyabridge.so` and `yabridgectl` files before upgrading to avoid
  confusing situations.
- Added the `yabridgectl set --path-auto` option to revert back to automatically
  locating yabridge's files after manually setting a path with
  `yabridgectl set --path=<...>`.
- Added the `yabridgectl set --no-verify={true,false}` option to permanently
  disable post-installation setup checks. You can still directly pass the
  `--no-verify` argument to `yabridgectl sync` to disable these checks for only
  a single invocation.

## [2.2.1] - 2020-12-12

### Fixed

- Fixed some plugins, notably the _Spitfire Audio_ plugins, from causing a
  deadlock when using plugin groups in _REAPER_. Even though this did not seem
  to cause any issues in other hosts, the race condition that caused this issue
  could also occur elsewhere.

## [2.2.0] - 2020-12-11

### Added

- Added an option to cache the time and tempo info returned by the host for the
  current processing cycle. This would normally not be needed since plugins
  should ask the host for this information only once per audio callback, but a
  bug in _SWAM Cello_ causes this to happen repeatedly for every sample,
  resutling in very bad performance. See the [compatibility
  options](https://github.com/robbert-vdh/yabridge#compatibility-options)
  section of the readme for more information on how to enable this.

### Changed

- When `YABRIDGE_DEBUG_LEVEL` is set to 2 or higher and a plugin asks the host
  for the current position in the song, yabridge will now print that position in
  quarter notes and samples as part of the debug output.
- `YABRIDGE_DEBUG_LEVEL` 2 will now also cause all audio processing callbacks to
  be logged. This makes recognizing misbheaving plugins a bit easier.
- Symbols in all `libyabridge.so` and all Winelib `.so` files are now hidden by
  default.

### Fixed

- Fixed an issue where in certain situations Wine processes were left running
  after the host got forcefully terminated before it got a chance to tell the
  plugin to shut down. This could happen when using Kontakt in Bitwig, as Bitwig
  sets a limit on the amount of time a plugin is allowed to spend closing when
  you close Bitwig, and Kontakt can take a while to shut down.
- Fixed a potential crash or freeze when removing a lot of plugins from a plugin
  group at exactly the same time.

## [2.1.0] - 2020-11-20

### Added

- Added a separate
  [yabridgectl](https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/yabridgectl/) AUR package for
  Arch and Manjaro. The original idea was that yabridgectl would not require a
  lot of changes and that a single
  [yabridgectl-git](https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/yabridgectl-git/) package
  would be sufficient, but sometimes changes to yabridgectl will be incompatible
  with the current release so it's nicer to also have a separate regular
  package.

### Changed

- Yabridge will now always search for `yabridge-host.exe` in
  `~/.local/share/yabridge` even if that directory is not in the search path.
  This should make setup easier, since you no longer have to modify any
  environment variables when installing yabridge to the default location.
  Because of this, the symlink-based installation method does not have a lot of
  advantages over the copy-based method anymore other than the fact that you
  can't forget to rerun `yabridgectl sync` after an upgrade, so most references
  to it have been removed from the readme.

### Fixed

- Fixed an issue where _Renoise_ would show an error message when trying to load
  a plugin in the mixer.

## [2.0.2] - 2020-11-14

### Fixed

- Added a workaround for a bug in _Ardour 6.3_ which would cause several plugins
  including MT Power Drumkit to crash when opening the editor.
- Fixed linking error in debug build related to the parallel STL.

## [2.0.1] - 2020-11-08

### Fixed

- Fixed a regression where `yabridge-host.exe` would not exit on its own after
  the host crashes or gets terminated without being able to properly close all
  plugins.

## [2.0.0] - 2020-11-08

### Added

- The way communication works in yabridge has been completely redesigned to be
  fully concurrent and to use additional threads as necessary. This was needed
  to allow yabridge to handle nested and mutually recursive function calls as
  well as several other edge cases a synchronous non-concurrent implementation
  would fail. What this boils down to is that yabridge became even faster, more
  responsive, and can now handle many scenarios that would previously require
  workarounds. The most noticeable effects of these changes are as follows:

  - The `hack_reaper_update_display` workaround for _REAPER_ and _Renoise_ to
    prevent certain plugins from freezing is no longer needed and has been
    removed.
  - Opening and scanning plugins becomes much faster in several VST hosts
    because more work can be done simultaneously.
  - Certain plugins, such as Kontakt, no longer interrupt audio playback in
    Bitwig while their editor was being opened.
  - Any loading issues in Bitwig Studio 3.3 beta 1 are no longer present.
  - Hosting a yabridged plugin inside of the VST2 version of Carla now works as
    expected.
  - And probably many more improvements.

  Aside from these more noticeable changes, this has also made it possible to
  remove a lot of older checks and behaviour that existed solely to work around
  the limitations introduced by the old event handling system. I have been
  testing this extensively to make sure that these changes don't not introduce
  any regressions, but please let me know if this did break anything for you.

### Changed

- The way the Wine process handles threading has also been completely reworked
  as part of the communication rework.
- GUI updates for plugins that don't use hardware acceleration are now run at 60
  Hz instead of 30 Hz. This was kept at 30 updates per second because that
  seemed to be a typical rate for Windows VST hosts and because function calls
  could not be processed while the GUI was being updated, but since that
  limitation now no longer exists we can safely bump this up.
- Sockets are now created in `$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR` (which is `/run/user/<user_id>`
  on most systems) instead of `/tmp` to avoid polluting `/tmp`.

### Removed

- The now obsolete `hack_reaper_update_display` option has been removed.
- The previously deprecated `use-bitbridge` and `use-winedbg` compilation
  options have been removed. Please use `with-bitbridge` and `with-winedbg`
  instead.

### Fixed

- Fixed a very long standing issue with plugins groups where unloading a plugin
  could cause a crash. Now you can host over a hundred plugins in a single
  process without any issues.
- Fixed another edge case with plugin groups when simultaneously opening
  multiple plugins within the same group. The fallover behaviour that would
  cause all of those plugins to eventually connect to a single group host
  process would sometimes not work correctly because the plugins were being
  terminated prematurely.
- Fixed the implementation of the accumulative `process()` function. As far as
  I'm aware no VST hosts made in the last few decades even use this, but it just
  feels wrong to have an incorrect implementation as part of yabridge.

## [1.7.1] - 2020-10-23

### Fixed

- Fixed a regression where the `editor_double_embed` option would cause X11
  errors and crash yabridge.
- Fixed a regression where certain fake dropdown menus such as those used in the
  Tokyo Dawn Records plugins would close immediately when hovering over them.
- Fixed an issue where plugins hosted within a plugin group would not shut down
  properly in certain situations. This would cause the VST host to hang when
  removing such a plugin.

### yabridgectl

- When running `yabridgectl sync`, existing .so files will no longer be
  recreated unless necessary. This prevents hosts from rescanning all plugins
  after setting up a single new plugin through yabridgectl. Running
  `yabridgectl sync` after updating yabridge will still recreate all existing
  .so files as usual.
- Added a `--force` option to `yabridgectl sync` to always recreate all existing
  .so files like in previous versions.
- Fixed a regression from yabridgectl 1.6.1 that prevented you from removing
  directories that no longer exist using `yabridgectl rm`.

## [1.7.0] - 2020-10-13

### Changed

- The way keyboard input works has been completely rewritten to be more reliable
  in certain hosts and to provide a more integrated experience. Hovering over
  the plugin's editor while the window provided by the host is active will now
  immediately grab keyboard focus, and yabridge will return input focus to the
  host's window when moving the mouse outside of the plugin's editor when the
  window is still active. This should fix some instances where keyboard input
  was not working in hosts with more complex editor windows like _REAPER_ and
  _Ardour_, and it also allows things like the comment field in REAPER's FX
  window to still function.

  A consequence of this change is that pressing Space in Bitwig Studio 3.2 will
  now play or pause playback as intended, but this does mean that it can be
  impossible to type the space character in text boxes inside of a plugin editor
  window. Please let me know if this causes any issues for you.

- Both unrecognized and invalid options are now printed on started to make
  debugging `yabridge.toml` files easier.

- Added a note to the message stating that libSwell GUI support has been
  disabled to clarify that this is expected behaviour when using REAPER. The
  message now also contains a suggestion to enable the
  `hack_reaper_update_display` option when it is not already enabled.

### Fixed

- Added a workaround for reparenting issues with the plugin editor GUI on a
  [specific i3 setup](https://github.com/robbert-vdh/yabridge/issues/40).

### Documentation

- The documentation on `yabridge.toml` files and the available options has been
  rewritten in an effort to make it easier to comprehend.

## [1.6.1] - 2020-09-28

### Fixed

- Fixed a potential crash that could happen if the host would unload a plugin
  immediately after its initialization. This issue affected the plugin scanning
  in _REAPER_.
- Fixed parsing order of `yabridge.toml`. Sections were not always read from top
  to bottom like they should be, which could cause incorrect and unexpected
  setting overrides.
- Fixed an initialization error when using plugin groups for plugins that are
  installed outside of a Wine prefix.

### yabridgectl

- Relative paths now work when adding plugin directories or when setting the
  path to yabridge's files.
- Also search `/usr/local/lib` for `libyabridge.so` when no manual path has been
  specified. Note that manually copying yabridge's files to `/usr` is still not
  recommended.

## [1.6.0] - 2020-09-17

### Added

- Added support for double precision audio processing. This is not very widely
  used, but some plugins running under REAPER make use of this. Without this
  those plugins would cause REAPER's audio engine to crash.

### Fixed

- Increased the limit for the maximum number of audio channels. This could cause
  issues in Renoise when using a lot of output channels.

## [1.5.0] - 2020-08-21

### Added

- Added an option to work around timing issues in _REAPER_ and _Renoise_ where
  the hosts can freeze when plugins call a certain function while the host
  doesn't expect it, see
  [#29](https://github.com/robbert-vdh/yabridge/issues/29) and
  [#32](https://github.com/robbert-vdh/yabridge/issues/32). The
  [readme](https://github.com/robbert-vdh/yabridge#runtime-dependencies-and-known-issues)
  contains instructions on how to enable this.

### Changed

- Don't print calls to `effIdle()` when `YABRIDGE_DEBUG_LEVEL` is set to 1.

### Fixed

- Fix Waves plugins from freezing the plugin process by preventing them from
  causing an infinite message loop.

## [1.4.1] - 2020-07-27

### yabridgectl

- Fixed regression caused by
  [alexcrichton/toml-rs#256](https://github.com/alexcrichton/toml-rs/issues/256)
  where the configuration file failed to parse after running `yabridgectl sync`.
  If you have already run `yabridgectl sync` using yabridgectl 1.4.0, then
  you'll have to manually remove the `[last_known_config]` section from
  `~/.config/yabridgectl/config.toml`.
- Fixed issue with overwriting broken symlinks during `yabridgectl sync`.

## [1.4.0] - 2020-07-26

### Added

- Added an alternative editor hosting mode that adds yet another layer of
  embedding. Right now the only known plugins that may need this are
  _PSPaudioware_ plugins with expandable GUIs such as E27. The behaviour can be
  enabled on a per-plugin basis in the plugin configuration. See the
  [readme](https://github.com/robbert-vdh/yabridge#compatibility-options)
  for more details.

### Changed

- Both parts of yabridge will now run with realtime priority if available. This
  can significantly reduce overall latency and spikes. Wine itself will still
  run with a normal scheduling policy by default, since running wineserver with
  realtime priority can actually increase the audio processing latency although
  it does reduce the amount of latency spikes even further. You can verify that
  yabridge is running with realtime priority by looking for the `realtime:` line
  in the initialization message. I have not found any downsides to this approach
  in my testing, but please let me know if this does end up causing any issues.

### Fixed

- Fixed rare plugin location detection issue on Debian based distros related to
  the plugin and host detection fix in yabridge 1.2.0.

### yabridgectl

- Added a check to `yabridgectl sync` that verifies that the currently installed
  versions of Wine and yabridge are compatible. This check will only be repeated
  after updating either Wine or yabridge.

- Added a `--no-verify` option to `yabridgectl sync` to skip the
  post-installation setup checks. This option will skip both the login shell
  search path check for the copy-based installation method as well as the new
  Wine compatibility check.

## [1.3.0] - 2020-07-17

### Added

- By somewhat popular demand yabridge now comes with yabridgectl, a utility that
  can automatically set up and manage yabridge for you. It also performs some
  basic checks to ensure that everything has been set up correctly so you can
  get up and running faster. Yabridgectl can be downloaded separately from the
  GitHub releases page and its use is completely optional, so you don't have to
  use it if you don't want to. Check out the
  [readme](https://github.com/robbert-vdh/yabridge/tree/master/tools/yabridgectl)
  for more information on how it works.

### Deprecated

- The `use-bitbridge` and `use-winedbg` options have been deprecated in favour
  of the new `with-bitbridge` and `with-winedbg` options. The old options will
  continue to work until they are removed in yabridge 2.0.0.

## [1.2.1] - 2020-06-20

### Changed

- When building from source, only statically link Boost when the
  `with-static-boost` option is enabled.
- The `use-bitbridge` and `use-winedbg` options have been replaced by
  `with-bitbridge` and `with-winedbg` for consistency's sake. The old options
  will be marked as deprecated in the next minor release.

### Fixed

- Fixed memory error that would cause crashing on playback with some buffer
  sizes in Mixbus6.
- Opening a plugin would override the Wine prefix for all subsequent plugins
  opened from within the same process. This prevented the use of multiple Wine
  prefixes in hosts that do not sandbox their plugins, such as Ardour.
- Manual Wine prefix overides through the `WINEPREFIX` environment were not
  reflected in the output shown on startup.
- Fixed plugin group socket name generation. This would have prevented plugin
  groups with the same name from being used simultaneously in different Wine
  prefixes.
- Distinguish between active processes and zombies when checking whether a group
  host process is still running during initialization.

## [1.2.0] - 2020-05-29

### Added

- Added the ability to host multiple plugins within a single Wine process
  through _plugin groups_. A plugin group is a user-defined set of plugins that
  will be hosted together in the same Wine process. This allows multiple
  instances of plugins to share data and communicate with each other. Examples
  of plugins that can benefit from this are FabFilter Pro-Q 3, MMultiAnalyzer,
  and the iZotope mixing plugins. See the readme for instructions on how to set
  this up.

### Changed

- Changed architecture to use one fewer socket.
- GUI events are now always handled on a steady timer rather than being
  interleaved as part of the event loop. This change was made to unify the event
  handling logic for individually hosted plugins and plugin groups. It should
  not have any noticeable effects, but please let me know if this does cause
  unwanted behavior.

### Fixed

- Steal keyboard focus when clicking on the plugin editor window to account for
  the new keyboard focus behavior in _Bitwig Studio 3.2_.
- Fixed large amount of empty lines in the log file when the Wine process closes
  unexpectedly.
- Made the plugin and host detection slightly more robust.

## [1.1.4] - 2020-05-12

### Fixed

- Fixed a static linking issue with the 32-bit build for Ubuntu 18.04.

## [1.1.3] - 2020-05-12

### Fixed

- Added a workaround for the compilation issues under Wine 5.7 and above as
  caused by [Wine bug #49138](https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=49138).
- Added a workaround for plugins that improperly defer part of their
  initialization process without telling the host. This fixes startup behavior
  for the Roland Cloud plugins.
- Added a workaround for a rare race condition in certain plugins caused by
  incorrect assumptions in plugin's editor handling. Fixes the editor for
  Superior Drummer 3 and the Roland Cloud synths in Bitwig Studio.
- Fixed potential issue with plugins not returning their editor size.

## [1.1.2] - 2020-05-09

### Fixed

- Fixed an issue where plugin removal could cause Ardour and Mixbus to crash.

## [1.1.1] - 2020-05-09

### Changed

- Changed installation recommendations to only install using symlinks with hosts
  that support individually sandboxed plugins.
- Respect `YABRIDGE_DEBUG_FILE` when printing initialization errors.

### Fixed

- Stop waiting for the Wine VST host process on startup if the process has
  crashed or if Wine was not able to start.

## [1.1.0] - 2020-05-07

### Added

- Added support for plugins that send MIDI events back to the host. This allows
  plugins such as Cthulhu and Scaler to output notes and CC for another plugin
  to work with.
- Added support for querying and setting detailed information about speaker
  configurations for use in advanced surround setups. This indirectly allows
  yabridge to work under _Renoise_.
- Added automated development builds for yabridge, available by clicking on the
  'Automated builds' badge in the project readme.

### Changed

- Changed the plugin detection mechanism to support yet another way of
  symlinking plugins. Now you can use a symlink to a copy of `libyabridge.so`
  that's installed for a plugin in another directory. This is not recommended
  though.
- Changed Wine prefix detection to be relative to the plugin's `.dll` file,
  rather than the loaded `.so` file.
- Increased the maximum number of audio channels from 32 to 256.
- Clarified the error that appears when we're unable to load the `.dll`.
- Yabridge will now print the used version of Wine during startup. This can be
  useful for diagnosing startup problems.

### Fixed

- Fixed plugins failing to load on certain versions of _Ubuntu_ because of
  paths starting with two forward slashes.
- Redirect the output from the Wine host process earlier in the startup process.
  Otherwise errors printed during startup won't be visible, making it very hard
  to diagnose problems.

## [1.0.0] - 2020-05-03

### Added

- This changelog file to track keep track of changes since yabridge's 1.0
  release.