KVR Audio

xos · Post by **xos** » Sat Nov 12, 2022 9:27 pm

Trying so set up a workflow and setup for developing VST2 plugs for Windows on Linux. And compiling the plugs for windows with MinGW.

Maybe you have some tips for this? I developed a VST2 plug on Linux, but it crashes after compiling it when running it on Windows. So I'm making a new try to make a plug, while also continuously testing the builds for windows while developing on Linux. So that I can fetch were cross platform capability goes wrong during development. But I'm struggling to find a good workflow before I start to develop for both platforms at the same time.

So do you have any advise on a windows host that can run on Linux for plugin development in Wine? Or should I install Carla and run them that way? Or do you have any better tips for a cross platform development?

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Sat Nov 12, 2022 9:32 pm

Any reason not to actually run Windows, eg in a VM?

xos · Post by **xos** » Sat Nov 12, 2022 10:37 pm

Yes! running Windows in a VM is an idea. It's just the headache of the windows license key. So would preferably not need to by a new windows license.

ghettosynth · Post by **ghettosynth** » Sat Nov 12, 2022 10:49 pm

xos wrote: ↑Sat Nov 12, 2022 10:37 pm Yes! running Windows in a VM is an idea. It's just the headache of the windows license key. So would preferably not need to by a new windows license.

Two points: First, to answer your question directly, Reaper runs well in Wine and also has a Linux build so you can have a similar testing environment for comparison. Second, you can install Windows 10/11 without a license and the limitations are minor, e.g., you can't set the desktop background. Now, I'm not advocating piracy, I'm not actually sure of the legal ramifications, if any, there. However, I do know that Linus of Linus Tech Tips does this for testing hardware and has talked about it at length on his channel. Bonus point: At some point I think that as a dev you just have to commit a bit more to testing environments. You're not going to easily test for M1 compatibility, for example, without forking over some money for an M1 mac. Windows laptops are cheap; bonus if you buy one at the low end, because you can determine whether your plugin works well on a low-end machine.

xos · Post by **xos** » Sat Nov 12, 2022 11:12 pm

ghettosynth wrote: ↑Sat Nov 12, 2022 10:49 pm Two points: First, to answer your question directly, Reaper runs well in Wine and also has a Linux build so you can have a similar testing environment for comparison. Second, you can install Windows 10/11 without a license and the limitations are minor, e.g., you can't set the desktop background. Now, I'm not advocating piracy, I'm not actually sure of the legal ramifications, if any, there. However, I do no that Linus of Linus Tech Tips does this for testing hardware and has talked about it at length on his channel. Bonus point: At some point I think that as a dev you just have to commit a bit more to testing environments. You're not going to easily test for M1 compatibility, for example, without forking over some money for an M1 mac. Windows laptops are cheap; bonus if you buy one at the low end, because you can determine whether your plugin works well on a low-end machine.

Yes! I would likely need many different hosts to test on.

I have a windows machine to test on. But at the moment I just need some convenient for testing, to make fast checks that it works. Maybe I could set up a network so I can transfer the file to the windows machine automatically. But It would be nice to not switch laptop at all for fast iterations when compiling and testing.

It looks like Bitwig can run in wine on Linux. I just tested that, as I have a licence. And it looks like it works without any issues. The only thing is that for getting the audio to work I needed to use the driver supplied that FL-studio installed in Wine.

Looks like I eventually need to learn how to use many different hosts for testing.

wrl · Post by **wrl** » Sat Nov 12, 2022 11:29 pm

Seconding the REAPER recommendation, it's treated me well.

The thing with running it in WINE though is that you're not really testing anything against Windows, you're testing against however-WINE-implemented-Windows, which, while generally very good these days, isn't perfect. You'll want a Windows machine to test with eventually, but WINE can sometimes help find bugs. I always double check against a Windows machine though.

Intel NUCs are cheap, as are the little ASUS PN50 line of Ryzen mini-PCs.

xos · Post by **xos** » Sun Nov 13, 2022 1:23 am

Yes! I installed Reaper. It was easy to use.

Maybe I can use some sort of remote desktop to control the windows computer and some type of network so I don't need to manually transfer files at all.

mystran · Post by **mystran** » Sun Nov 13, 2022 8:08 am

The workflow I use for cross-platform development is to put the source code into a git repository (eg. a local network share works if you want to avoid the cloud), then clone and build locally on each platform. If there's a problem, you can debug and fix it directly on the platform experiencing the problems even if it's not your main development platform and afterwards just push the changes back into the master repository. I think this is much easier than trying to build on one system and test on another.

rafa1981 · Post by **rafa1981** » Sun Nov 13, 2022 9:30 pm

In my case I went to great lengths to avoid installing Visual Studio on Windows (dozens of GB) when I only wanted the SDK which is about 1GB. They make it hard to avoid the bloat.

You can crosscompile on Linux directly using clang (cl) provided you download the Windows SDK and fix some issues with case insensitivity. This project does it for you:
https://github.com/Jake-Shadle/xwin

From that point it is regular cross-compile and CMake stuff. Neither interesting nor immediate but not imposible to figure out. You can check how it's done here:
https://github.com/RafaGago/artv-audio

For the steps involves, you can look at the github workflow file.

For debugging I think that you can cross debug on Wine but I didn't get it working in 1 hour when I tried and I desisted. As I'm using JUCE I have never found a Windows only bug. I run YOLO. For caution I export a pdb to be able to open Windows crash dumps (with WinDbg), should they happen.

This setup is enough for my OSS project. Probably a bit fragile though, as it depends on not so mainstream tooling and workflows.

I don't do Mac, but I guess that that one is much harder to crosscompile.

xos · Post by **xos** » Fri Nov 25, 2022 3:33 am

What I eventually did was to install MinGW on Linux and cross-compiled to windows on the Linux computer, with the same sourcecode for both Linux and Windows. I don't know if it's the right way, but it's good enough for now.

And I made a makefile to control compiling with automatic transfers of files to the windows computer.
And I set up VNC so I can see the windows desktop and remote control the windows computer, as wine's windows emulation is not good enough. I installed the development branch of Wine so I can write some bug reports later on, so I can see if they will make some improvements for running some audio applications or other windows applications.

And I also set it up ssh so I can run windows commands from Linux on the windows computer if needed. But as it looks at the moment I will probably not need it.

But I will need to use some more hosts to test in. Reaper looked like a good advise. Has anyone tested NanoHost from tone2 or Element from kushview? Or does anyone have some better ideas? Maybe something with good error reporting?

Markus Krause · Post by **Markus Krause** » Fri Nov 25, 2022 9:39 am

Nanohost is free, tiny, fast and works fine under Wine (tested it under Zorin Linux with various products). I also use it for development and debugging.
https://www.tone2.com/nanohost.html
https://www.tone2.com/nanohost_manual.html

rl · Post by rl » Sat Nov 26, 2022 11:18 pm

For testing and debugging under Linux/Wine I'm using Carla. Carla has the nice feature that I can quickly unload/reload the plugin.

audiojunkie · Post by **audiojunkie** » Sun Nov 27, 2022 2:08 am

wrl wrote: ↑Sat Nov 12, 2022 11:29 pm Seconding the REAPER recommendation, it's treated me well.

The thing with running it in WINE though is that you're not really testing anything against Windows, you're testing against however-WINE-implemented-Windows, which, while generally very good these days, isn't perfect. You'll want a Windows machine to test with eventually, but WINE can sometimes help find bugs. I always double check against a Windows machine though.

Intel NUCs are cheap, as are the little ASUS PN50 line of Ryzen mini-PCs.

I agree with this. If you are writing apps for Windows, you need a real Windows environment to test on. The same if you are writing for Apple or Linux.

audiojunkie · Post by **audiojunkie** » Sun Nov 27, 2022 2:12 am

xos wrote: ↑Sun Nov 13, 2022 1:23 am Yes! I installed Reaper. It was easy to use.

Maybe I can use some sort of remote desktop to control the windows computer and some type of network so I don't need to manually transfer files at all.

RDP works fine for some things—for instance, a business app. But in this case, you need to be able to test how well the audio works under various latencies and loads. RDP would be crap for that.

I guess you could develop the basic functionality that way and rely on beta testers to the things that won’t work well with RDP.

rafa1981 · Post by **rafa1981** » Sun Nov 27, 2022 1:12 pm

Don't forget QEMU if you want to avoid involving two computers. Unfortunately it wasn't very straightforward to get good low latency audio last time I checked. Probably the situation has improved with PipeWire.

Is there a simple host that can run in Wine on Linux for testing Windows VST2 plugs