[solved] Strange behaviour regarding lv2-dev and MusE

MusE is a DAW for Linux with both MIDI and Audio editing. https://muse-sequencer.github.io

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[solved] Strange behaviour regarding lv2-dev and MusE

Post by Impostor »

Hi, I'm running MusE 4.1 appimage.

When I don't have the package lv2-dev installed, then the right-click synth menu contains no lv2 synths under the synth section. Those are found in the "effects" section.

When I do have lv2-dev installed, the lv2 synths are correctly found in the synths section, and not in the "effects" section anymore.

Okay, then just install lv2-dev, right? Well, I had that installed lately, but today I found out that having that package installed broke nearly all my older MusE projects (all created before I had lv2-dev installed), in the sense that loading a project led to various lv2 plugins being reported as "cannot be found", even though they haven't moved, and I can just add these very same "missing" plugins on new tracks! (Affected lv2 plugins were pianoteq 7+8, odin2, calf monosynth, all avl drumkits, maybe more)

That would not be so big of a problem if one could just switch synth plugins on an existing track, while keeping the effects rack and all automation. But alas, that does not seem possible!

Because I didn't yet know that lv2-dev was the culprit, I restored an old (december 2022) snapshot with Timeshift, and brought my system back up to date step by step. Thankfully I found out the cause, and my projects are still accessible without the offending package!

Edit: And my new projects, created with lv2-dev present, don't seem to be affected by its removal. Phew..
Edit 2: Except for Fluida.lv2. The prebuilt binary doesn't work on my system, so I built that myself. One of its build dependencies was lv2-dev, though, and removing it crippled the plugin too.

Last edited by Impostor on Mon May 01, 2023 10:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Strange behaviour regarding lv2-dev and MusE

Post by Tim E. Real »

Naturally, the development packages of lv2, lilv, and sord are required.
Unlike the other plugin architectures, the LV2 package is particularly important
to include in our list of LV2 plugin paths because it contains important files
that must be in the path otherwise many plugins won't be found or work.
There is a warning in our configuration dialog:

lv2 paths snapshot.png
lv2 paths snapshot.png (34.35 KiB) Viewed 1309 times

Looking at the contents of lv2-dev, it does include many of the necessary files to operate correctly.

Hopefully that helps explain why some things might not be working.

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Re: Strange behaviour regarding lv2-dev and MusE

Post by Impostor »

Tim E. Real wrote: Thu Mar 30, 2023 7:56 pm

Hopefully that helps explain why some things might not be working.

The thing is, installing lv2-dev compromised my old MusE projects, which were created in its absence, and work fine again when I uninstall it.

And lv2-dev is not listed as a dependency of the (old) MusE version in the Ubuntu Focal repo at least. Anyway, I reinstalled lv2-dev, together with most lilv-dev stuff I could find, in the hopes that various lv2 quirks I've encountered the past couple of months would disappear, but no such luck..

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Re: Strange behaviour regarding lv2-dev and MusE

Post by Tim E. Real »

OK I think there is a serious problem here.

Look at the contents of Ubuntu's lv2-dev package.
Do you see all those *.ttl files in there?

Those are critical run-time files necessary for the correct operation of LV2 hosts.
They have no bearing whatsoever on the building of software.
Those are the 'core bundle' files that our dialog refers to (above).
Why on earth did they put them in a developer package?

On my Suse linux, those files are contained in the run-time lv2 package - not the developer package.

I suspect this means anyone wishing to use our AppImages will have to install that lv2-dev developer package on Ubuntu.

This seems to be a major screw-up.

I tried to see if Ubuntu's QTractor requires lv2-dev, but I see it (nor the lv2 run-time package) is not even listed as a requirement.

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Re: Strange behaviour regarding lv2-dev and MusE

Post by Impostor »

Tim E. Real wrote: Thu Mar 30, 2023 9:43 pm

OK I think there is a serious problem here.

Look at the contents of Ubuntu's lv2-dev package.
Do you see all those *.ttl files in there?

Those are critical run-time files necessary for the correct operation of LV2 hosts.
They have no bearing whatsoever on the building of software.
Those are the 'core bundle' files that our dialog refers to (above).
Why on earth did they put them in a developer package?

That would be a bit of a screw-up indeed. But I must say, apart from having an effect on the categorisation of the lv2 synths in MusE, I've noticed no difference in the behaviour of the plugins themselves the past month or so since I had installed lv2-dev for building fluida.lv2. I've had a lv2-devless setup for the three years prior to that. The presence of lv2-dev doesn't fix the "quirks" with lv2's I've encountered before.

Too bad that my projects created in lv2-dev's absence are broken in its presence though. At least I now know to uninstall it before attempting to open them.

And I don't see any obvious lv2 runtime package at all in Synaptic Package Manager. These are the listed dependencies of MusE 3.0.2 in the repo (linux mint/ubuntu repo focal/universe):

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Re: Strange behaviour regarding lv2-dev and MusE

Post by j_e_f_f_g »

Ubuntu's maintainers have a tendency to significantly modify upstream's code, which they shouldn't because they often don't know what they're doing, and deliver lots of buggy/broken software as a result.

Use Debian instead. It's Ubuntu without the mistakes.

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Re: Strange behaviour regarding lv2-dev and MusE

Post by onefang »

I'm seeing those .ttl files in the KXStudio PPA version of lv2-dev, which I'm using under Devuan.

Oddly that's http://ppa.launchpad.net/kxstudio-debia ... dio/ubuntu so maybe their Debian versions inherited that from Ubuntu? I also had to use Ubuntu suite names.

Edit: I should have mentioned that I have all the -dev stuff installed, since I build my own MusE from source, so I can have the very latest.

Last edited by onefang on Sun Apr 02, 2023 4:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Strange behaviour regarding lv2-dev and MusE

Post by onefang »

j_e_f_f_g wrote: Sat Apr 01, 2023 3:07 am

Use Debian instead. It's Ubuntu without the mistakes.

I've heard Ubuntu described as Debian with a straight jacket.

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Re: Strange behaviour regarding lv2-dev and MusE

Post by Impostor »

onefang wrote: Sun Apr 02, 2023 3:52 pm

I'm seeing those .ttl files in the KXStudio PPA version of lv2-dev, which I'm using under Devuan.

Edit: I should have mentioned that I have all the -dev stuff installed, since I build my own MusE from source, so I can have the very latest.

I found the "very latest" version to be much more crash prone than the latest stable one. At one time I had a project where, when freshly loaded, the very displacement or deletion of a part which needed such a treatment caused MusE to crash (there's a bug in the undo function or something). That's when I decided to go back to the stable 4.1 release to make music with. I only use the master now for testing.

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Re: Strange behaviour regarding lv2-dev and MusE

Post by Impostor »

onefang wrote: Sun Apr 02, 2023 3:52 pm

I'm seeing those .ttl files in the KXStudio PPA version of lv2-dev, which I'm using under Devuan.

Oddly that's http://ppa.launchpad.net/kxstudio-debia ... dio/ubuntu so maybe their Debian versions inherited that from Ubuntu? I also had to use Ubuntu suite names.

Edit: I should have mentioned that I have all the -dev stuff installed, since I build my own MusE from source, so I can have the very latest.

Question: If you built MusE master from source, and if there's an update to the master, do you need to uninstall the old one, before installing the new version?

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Re: Strange behaviour regarding lv2-dev and MusE

Post by Tim E. Real »

Well it doesn't hurt to do that.
After all, that's what a package manager would do.
It avoids stale or obsolete installation files that might affect operation.

Unlike some other cmake based projects, we have a cmake uninstall script. We borrowed it from Rosegarden!

Configuration data is another matter. Generally uninstalls don't touch that stuff.
We (I) strive to make each version of MusE as backward compatible as possible,
simply accepting old data and converting it to any possible newer format before re-saving.
A warning tells you that you are opening an older song file or have old configuration files and that
if you save anything beyond this point, the data format may change.

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Re: Strange behaviour regarding lv2-dev and MusE

Post by Impostor »

Tim E. Real wrote: Mon Apr 03, 2023 4:48 pm

Unlike some other cmake based projects, we have a cmake uninstall script. We borrowed it from Rosegarden!

Can that be done with a newly cloned muse git folder, or should I keep the current one until uninstallation?

Tim E. Real wrote: Mon Apr 03, 2023 4:48 pm

A warning tells you that you are opening an older song file or have old configuration files and that if you save anything beyond this point, the data format may change.

Yes, I lost count of the times I had to re-order the toolbars due to switching between the master app and the 4.1 app.

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Re: Strange behaviour regarding lv2-dev and MusE

Post by onefang »

Impostor wrote: Mon Apr 03, 2023 12:11 pm
onefang wrote: Sun Apr 02, 2023 3:52 pm

I'm seeing those .ttl files in the KXStudio PPA version of lv2-dev, which I'm using under Devuan.

Oddly that's http://ppa.launchpad.net/kxstudio-debia ... dio/ubuntu so maybe their Debian versions inherited that from Ubuntu? I also had to use Ubuntu suite names.

Edit: I should have mentioned that I have all the -dev stuff installed, since I build my own MusE from source, so I can have the very latest.

Question: If you built MusE master from source, and if there's an update to the master, do you need to uninstall the old one, before installing the new version?

I don't actually install it, just run it from the build directory, then wipe the build directory and build it again next time.

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Re: Strange behaviour regarding lv2-dev and MusE

Post by Impostor »

onefang wrote: Mon Apr 03, 2023 7:23 pm

I don't actually install it, just run it from the build directory, then wipe the build directory and build it again next time.

So you skip the last step sudo make install without ill side effects?

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Re: Strange behaviour regarding lv2-dev and MusE

Post by onefang »

Impostor wrote: Mon Apr 03, 2023 7:35 pm
onefang wrote: Mon Apr 03, 2023 7:23 pm

I don't actually install it, just run it from the build directory, then wipe the build directory and build it again next time.

So you skip the last step sudo make install without ill side effects?

Correct.

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