as many of you know Im working on a new release of EigenD.
primarily this has been instigated by support of apple silicon, however unsurprisingly this is also raising questions about support of ‘older’ technologies.
This is a topic Ive been considering for a while now, and when do we ‘break from the past’
Most of the following can be seen as Mac specific, however, really its not Windows and Linux also are seeing similar questions being raised, and also I do NOT want to start having differences across platforms.
really, Id like some feedback from users, how these changes might affect them
important note
most changes in a new version of EigenD are to support NEW platforms.
the older version of EigenD will still be available for older platforms so you will not be ‘missing much’
however… obviously, they will NOT be updated.
1. 64 bit support (vs 32 bit)
EigenD 2.1.7 was available as 32 or 64 bit.
my feeling is that most users are on 64 bit these days.
Im planning on dropping 32 bit support for simple reason it takes me a long time to complile/package and release each platform - so I want to only support the ones that are used by most users and are current.
this will happen for in 2.2.0 for macOS,
but I hope we can also move windows to 64 bit as soon as I sort out the usb driver, so it has a ‘stay of execution’
note:
EigenD only support native architecture plugins, there is no bridging.
so 64 bit EigenD implies 64 bit plugins only!
2. OS Versions
for similar reasons to the 32bit/64 issue, and also due to dependancies on the juce sdk,
we need to keep pushing forward on which OS version we ‘support’.
for 2.2.0,
on mac, Ive moved this to mac os 10.13+
on windows, Im not sure we have to specify, but I think people are only running windows 10?
(certainly thats the only machine I have to test on)
3. VST 2 vs. VST 3
Steinberg have now officially dropped VST2 support.
also legally, you need a license to use the VST2 SDK, you cannot just use it on in open source projects.
ideally we should therefore drop VST 2 support , in favour of VST 3.
I suspect a fair majority of 64 bit plugins (see 1.) are also available as VST 3.
(given Steinberg’s move, I guess we will see vst3 support continue to grow)
EDIT: seems some newer plugins are now VST3 only, so VST 2 support will limit available plugins too.
(thanks @keymanpal for pointing this out, see post below)
4. Python 2.7 and 3.x
for 2.2.0 on the Mac, Im switching to use the system python 2.7 , this is 2.7.16
this is all part of the planned change to remove the dependancy on the EigenD-Runtime package, which is unsupportable.
originally eigend used 2.6, from a local build - but the experimental 64 bit build has been using 2.7.10 without issue.
using the supplied python will make for an easier install on macOS, and it is also the latest/last version of 2.x python.
for windows, we could also move to 2.7 and require users to install from python.org - this would give us synergy, as it also move windows users away from the eigenlabs supplied python to an ‘official release’.
(linux users already ensure python is installed from an official source)
my hope is to eventually move python 3.0, at this point windows users will definitely be required to install from python.org.
some of this has been discussed on other threads, but I think its important that I make it 100% clear, since I know changing compatibilty with things will affect users.
obviously the main goal here is to keep EigenD ‘current’ , it needs to move with the times, to ensure it does not become obsolete - and at the same time I need to keep the maintenance/dev effort to a level I can realistically support.
thoughts?