Mac installer for audio sample libraries best practices?

[David Healey]

@WillowWolf said in Mac installer for audio sample libraries best practices?:

I've been having success using araelium package builder.

Does it have a way to prompt the user to select a folder?

[dannytaurus]

@David-Healey I'm still not 100% sure why the need to install to both system and user spaces on Mac. Can you explain?

As far as I understand, it's to install the plugin to the system /Library folder (for all users) and the samples to the user ~/Library folder (for the current user only).

What's the point of installing the plugin to the system folder for all users if the samples are sandboxed to a specific user? Other users on the machine won't be able to use the plugin without the samples.

The only reason I can think of is that DAWs have the system plugin folders set as default (/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins) but not the user plugin folders (~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins).

Meaning some DAWs might miss plugins installed to the user Plug-Ins folder unless the user updates the search paths.

I don't know for sure what plugin paths DAWs use by default. Would be a good one to look up.

[David Healey]

@dannytaurus said in Mac installer for audio sample libraries best practices?:

I'm still not 100% sure why the need to install to both system and user spaces on Mac. Can you explain?

The standard location for plugins is the system wide folder - although you can install in the user folder if you prefer.

Data files (like AudioResources.dat) needs to go in the user's Application Support folder. But if you don't have any data files then you don't need to install anything in the user locations...

Unless your installer also includes samples in which case you'll want to create the LinkOSX file in the user location - but you should only be doing this if you've prompted the user to choose a location to install the samples since there is no standard samples location, but as far as I can tell there is no method for prompting the user on macOS.

[dannytaurus]

@David-Healey said in Mac installer for audio sample libraries best practices?:

Data files (like AudioResources.dat) needs to go in the user's Application Support folder.

Why not the system Application Support folder? /Library/Application Support

[David Healey]

@dannytaurus said in Mac installer for audio sample libraries best practices?:

Why not the system Application Support folder? /Library/Application Support

You can if you enable the Global App Data Folder option in HISE preferences - although I find it causes weird issues for me. But I think the idea is in a multi-user setup different users will have different presets and preferences so those settings are per-user.

[dannytaurus]

@David-Healey Right, makes sense.

I'll dig around some other plugins and see where they put their data can assets, to get a feel for it.

[Lindon]

@WillowWolf said in Mac installer for audio sample libraries best practices?:

@Lindon

What was your approach to making an in plugin setup for samples?

Any advice or suggestions would be helpful, since I'm exploring a similar route.

Ok so...

I have a json file that is saved by the plugin to the AppData folder, this is the Setup manifest - here's an example, as it is defined in the code:

reg defaultInstallManifest =
{
	"DownloadTargetFolder" : "Not Set",
	"DownloadApproach" : "",
	"downloadSpace": 3670,
	"samplerSpace" : 3990,
	"version" : 30000,
	"type": "setup",
	"setupSteps" :
	[
		{
			"downloadFileName" :  "www.xxxxx.com/download/zzzzz/ProductNameData01.cra", // Sample files ch1
			"downloadFileDestination" : "ProductNameData01.cra",
			"downloadFileContents" : "Sample Files",
			"installDestination" : destinations.USERSAMPLE_LOCATION,
			"status" : destinations.UNSTARTED
		},
		{
			"downloadFileName" :  "www.xxxxx.com/download/zzzzz/ProductNameData02.cra", // Sample files ch1
			"downloadFileDestination" : "ProductNameData02.cra",
			"downloadFileContents" : "Sample Files",
			"installDestination" : destinations.USERSAMPLE_LOCATION,
			"status" : destinations.UNSTARTED
		},
		{
			"downloadFileName" :  "www.xxxxx.com/download/zzzzz/ProductNameData03.cra", // Sample files ch1
			"downloadFileDestination" : "ProductNameData03.cra",
			"downloadFileContents" : "Sample Files",
			"installDestination" : destinations.USERSAMPLE_LOCATION,
			"status" : destinations.UNSTARTED
		},
		{
			"downloadFileName" :  "www.xxxxx.com/download/zzzzz/ProductNameData04.cra", // Sample files ch1
			"downloadFileDestination" : "ProductNameData04.cra",
			"downloadFileContents" : "Sample Files",
			"installDestination" : destinations.USERSAMPLE_LOCATION,
			"status" : destinations.UNSTARTED
		},
		{
			"downloadFileName" :  "www.xxxxx.com/download/zzzzz/ProductNameData05.cra", // Sample files ch1
			"downloadFileDestination" : "ProductNameData05.cra",
			"downloadFileContents" : "Sample Files",
			"installDestination" : destinations.USERSAMPLE_LOCATION,
			"status" : destinations.UNSTARTED
		},
		{
			"downloadFileName" :  "www.xxxxx.com/download/zzzzz/ProductNameData06.cra", // Sample files ch1
			"downloadFileDestination" : "ProductNameData06.cra",
			"downloadFileContents" : "Sample Files",
			"installDestination" : destinations.USERSAMPLE_LOCATION,
			"status" : destinations.UNSTARTED
		},
		{
			"downloadFileName" :  "www.xxxxx.com/download/zzzzz/ProductNameData07.cra", // Sample files ch1
			"downloadFileDestination" : "ProductNameData07.cra",
			"downloadFileContents" : "Sample Files",
			"installDestination" : destinations.USERSAMPLE_LOCATION,
			"status" : destinations.UNSTARTED
		},
		{
			"downloadFileName" :  "www.xxxxx.com/download/zzzzz/ProductNameData08.cra", // Sample files ch1
			"downloadFileDestination" : "ProductNameData08.cra",
			"downloadFileContents" : "Sample Files",
			"installDestination" : destinations.USERSAMPLE_LOCATION,
			"status" : destinations.UNSTARTED
		},
		{
			"downloadFileName" :  "www.xxxxx.com/download/zzzzz/ProductNameData09.cra", // Sample files ch1
			"downloadFileDestination" : "ProductNameData09.cra",
			"downloadFileContents" : "Loop Files",
			"installDestination" : destinations.USERSAMPLE_LOCATION,
			"status" : destinations.UNSTARTED
		},
		{
			"downloadFileName" :  "www.xxxxx.com/download/zzzzz/ProductNameData10.cra",  //the meta files 
			"downloadFileDestination" : "ProductNameData10.cra",
			"downloadFileContents" : "Meta Data Files",
			"installDestination" : destinations.APPDATA_LOCATION,
			"status" : destinations.UNSTARTED
		},
		{
			"downloadFileName" :  "www.xxxxx.com/download/zzzzz/ProductNameData11.cra",  // audio wav files
			"downloadFileDestination" : "ProductNameData11.cra",
			"downloadFileContents" : "Audio Files",
			"installDestination" : destinations.AUDIOFILES_LOCATION,
			"status" : destinations.UNSTARTED
		},
		{
			"downloadFileName" :  "www.xxxxx.com/download/zzzzz/ProductNameData12.cra",  // presets
			"downloadFileDestination" : "ProductNameData12.cra",
			"downloadFileContents" : "Preset Files",
			"installDestination" : destinations.PRESETS_LOCATION,
			"status" : destinations.UNSTARTED
		}

	]


};

So on start up the plugin looks for a manifest file in the AppData folder, and when it doesnt find it - then it knows that there is a set up to do....so it uses this internally included version (above) of this file to do the set up...

It should be pretty obvious, what is happening. There are a bunch of file URLs that point to stuff that needs to be downloaded, so first the plugin installer asks where the user wants to put these temp download files...and it checks there's enough room in the user specified location...

If there is enough room it iterates over the steps downloading these files ( I usually limit the file sizes to about 500MB), as each is done it updates the step status to "downloaded"...

When everything has been downloaded it checks to see if there is any sample data in the manifest, if there is it asks the user where they want to keep their sample data on a permanent basis...it checks there is enough space in the users requested location.

If there is it creates a "Link File" and begins the unarchiving process for each step putting the contents of each downloaded file in its final location and updating the manifest on disk as it does so with the status "installed"....

When its done it offers the user the opportunity to delete those temp download files and tells the user to restart the plugin...

The plugin restarts, finds the Manifest file, checks its all been completed("installed") successfully and if it has it starts to run like a normal plugin....

The system includes an off-line setup process too - but the number of users who have opted for this as tiny tiny tiny...

It took very little effort to enhance this to allow the plugin to download and install expansions too...essentially this will download and set up for you: samples, their link file, meta data, wav files, graphics, basically anything you can zip up and know the location you want to use...

With this approach the only thing the "classic" installer (like whitebox etc.) has to do is put the VST3 and AU files wherever you want them...

This whole sub system is actually available to license from me if you wish...

[HISEnberg]

@David-Healey Yes sorry to mislead you I was completely wrong about this....

[David Healey]

Packages dev got back to me and said there is no feature in the Apple installer format for prompting the user for a path. All files need to be set to a specific location.

However he said it might be possible using a plugin - written in Objective C or Swift.

[David Healey]

I also emailed the Araelium dev and he said the situation is the same with Package Builder. The limitation is with the Apple installer which all pkg files use.