Choices for the Linux side of things

[visagemsc]

Linux is a varied ecosystem with sometimes more options than one and we need to pick some APIs and technologies to implement into CPLUG's window extension and the standalone version. I'm going to lay out my picks and let you guys decide if this is OK or if different ones should be considered.

Audio subsystems: ALSA, JACK, Pulse Audio and PipeWire
Display protocols: X11 first, then Wayland
Graphics API: Vulkan

[Tremus]

That all sounds excellent.

Note that with Scream, all the fancy GPU API stuff is wrapped by another library sokol_gfx. Vulkan is still new feature in sokol_gfx.
In the window extension, you may have already seen that it offers the ability to initialise the graphics API for the user with sensible defaults. This is enabled using the macros PW_DX11 and PW_METAL, for Linux it will probably need something like PW_VULKAN. In order to communicate with other libraries such as sokol_gfx or Dear ImGui, you may need to export some "device", similar to this here

CPLUG/src/cplug_extensions/window.h

Line 236 in fca76a0

void* pw_get_metal_device(void* pw);

Best of luck, and thank you :)

[dromer]

Audio subsystems: ALSA, JACK, Pulse Audio and PipeWire

I think here only ALSA and JACK should have any priority. Pulse Audio is pretty much deprecated at this point and PipeWire supports all of the above.

Also I kind of assume that having standalones in CPLUG are of low priority anyway (maybe just for quick testing?)

[Tremus]

Having a standalone build you can rapidly iterate in is likely the quickest way to test features in the window extension. Having to constantly open/close a DAW every time there is a crash will slow you down and may drive you crazy. It may be more time efficient to get standalone builds working first.

[dromer]

@Tremus that's what I'm saying: for quick testing

But not as a final product (similar to DPF). Having to support a legion of audio backends sounds like it might be unwanted because it adds a lot of maintenance overhead. If this is just for quick testing I'd pick a simple common denominator.

Jack builds in DPF are super handy and I use them a lot for quick turn around.

[visagemsc]

I think here only ALSA and JACK should have any priority. Pulse Audio is pretty much deprecated at this point and PipeWire supports all of the above.

@dromer Now, I know this is a skill issue of gigantic proportion but try as I might, ALSA and JACK does not play ball with my system (Linux Mint) and really only Pulse and Pipewire does. I do have the needed packages installed but I just get errors when I wanna use it on REAPER and Bitwig.

[dromer]

@visagemsc odd, since Pipewire supports both ALSA and JACK APIs.

Check with your Mint support perhaps?