yabridge/CHANGELOG.md

Changelog

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

The format is based on Keep a Changelog, and this project adheres to Semantic Versioning.

[Unreleased]

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 section of the readme for more information on how to enable this.
• Added the with-vst3 option to control whether yabridge should be built with VST3 support. This is enabled by default.

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 may take to close when closing 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 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 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.

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 and #32. The readme 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 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 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 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.
• 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.