juce_clap_hosting

This repository contains a JUCE module, which allows the user to host CLAP plugins within a JUCE app/plugin.

Note: this software should be considered super-alpha! I'm hoping to get it working at a production level at some point, but we're definitely not at that point just yet. If you're here because you want to host CLAP plugins in your JUCE app, I'd recommend coming back in the next few weeks/months to see how far along we've gotten. If you're here because you'd like to contribute to the project, welcome and please read on!

Strategy

JUCE makes it fairly straightforward to add support for hosting new or custom plugin formats, by creating subclasses of juce::AudioPluginFormat. This module exports a single top-level class, CLAPPluginFormat, which satisfies this requirement. The idea is that the end user should have a very easy time of adding CLAP support to their app, ideally the only required change would be something like:

pluginFormatManager.addDefaultFormats(); // registers default formats (VST3 and AU on Mac)
pluginFormatManager.addFormat (new juce::CLAPPluginFormat); // adds CLAP support!

Development

This repository is set up so that when it is being worked with as a top-level folder (i.e. not a submodule), it sets up an example project, based on JUCE's HostPluginDemo. To build the example with CMake, run:

$ cmake -Bbuild
$ cmake --build build --target TestHostPlugin_Standalone

Status

At the moment, the test host can scan for plugins and process audio through the plugin (so far I've only tested with plugins that so stereo input and output).

There's a long list of things TODO:

Scanning:
- Check the CLAP_PATH environment variable for plugins to scan.
Audio I/O
- Check audio port configurations
Add MIDI support
Parameters
- Implement clapParamsClear() and clapParamsFlush()
- Improve clapParamsRescan() to actually use the rescanning flags
Implement clapRequestProcess() and clapRequestRestart()
Finish implementing CLAP state extension
Implement CLAP GUI extension
Implement CLAP latency extension
Implement CLAP thread-check extension
Implement CLAP render extension
Implement CLAP tail extension