Announcing - Rack Extension - Quick Start

[pongasoft]

Hello everyone

I am very happy to announce the release of a brand new web/online tool that lets you easily create a fully buildable and deployable Rack Extension by simply filling out a form (similar to what I did with Jamba). After filling out the (long) name and manufacturer the other
fields will have default values that you can obviously change. You can choose the size and type of the RE.

The tool is accessible on the pongasoft website Rack Extension - Quick Start

The 2 preview sections let you see:

- what the plugin looks like (for example an effect will have a stereo pair of inputs and output in the back, a note player will have nothing)
- what the generated files look like (the tool takes care of generating the right motherboard including routing, bypass, etc... as well as the properly sized background images including transparent section for the rails, device2D.lua, hdgui_2D.lua, etc...)

If you are satisfied with what you see you can download the zip file, unzip it and build it (follow the instructions in the README file).

Note that if you have the SDK installed in the "default" (per re-cmake) location (which means you don't have to provide it as a parameter to the configure command), then this entire series of steps boils down to:

1. fill out the form
2. download zip file and unzip
3. cd <zip>; run ./configure.py
4. cd build; run ./re.sh install
5. start recon and load the device

I can do these steps in less than 1 minute (yes it is not a typo... and the longest is to start recon!)

Here is an overview of the tool

Screen Shot 2020-11-12 at 06.23.53.png

The code of the tool itself will be made open source as well once I clean it up a bit (meaning write documentation).

As always, please provide feedback and do not hesitate to reach out for help!

Yan

[Loque]

Dude! Great stuff! I just wish the day has more than 24h

[esselfortium]

This is amazing, great work!

[pongasoft]

I have recorded a short video demonstrating the tool in action:

Yan

[avasopht]

Awesome. Thanks!

[Boombastix]

Very interesting. I hope RS will start to pay you to develop this further.

I downloaded the RE SDK and tried to read through it, to understand how it all tied together, but found it was like a pile of spaghetti. Went to the developer forum, just to find other users asking the most basic questions on how to get started, things that wasn't described/clear in the manuals, and there was so much missing or not useful. Realized it would probably take several weeks just to understand the SDK and try to find missing info that might be hiding buried on the forum etc. It wasn't worth my time. Felt like the manuals were written by an engineer for an engineer who had 5+yrs of RE development experience.

This could clearly be the start of making something user friendly.

[miscend]

Felt like the manuals were written by an engineer for an engineer who had 5+yrs of RE development experience.

This could clearly be the start of making something user friendly.

Lol. The SDK was originally designed for seasoned coders with deep knowledge of DSP. But of course that's all changed now since making the SDK public.

[pongasoft]

I just published/open sourced the code of the tool itself if you are interested: https://github.com/pongasoft/re-quickstart

Yan

[visheshl]

can you make this tool a mac app please ?

[pongasoft]

can you make this tool a mac app please ?

I am not sure what the advantage would be. This tool run in any browser on any OS (Windows, Mac and even Linux even if you can't write RE under Linux). If I were to make it a mac app, it would run only on mac and would do the exact same thing. Am I missing something?

[visheshl]

hmm, you're right

[Billy+]

This should be a sticky,

Now all we need is GUI tutorials, community GitHub & someone to manage the distribution of free community RE's.

[visheshl]

EDIT : actually nevermind man, i was interested in vst development but id rather leave it to the pros ..they know what they're doing. im just a musician with dreams of making my own perfect synth...it is better if musicuans stick to making music and coders stick to coding

pongasoft can you create a beginners tutorial to create an RE ?
lets say you generate an re using your tool, now what....please create a beginners tutorial about a basic effect like a gain control it connects between the mixer channel and the instrument and has one gain knob. but i need a start to fi ish tutorial...after generating the blank effect re from your tool whats the cmake stuff...a one page tutorial about a basic gain control effect which goes thru everything you need to do from start to finish...but please assume that the beginner like me knows absolutely nothing...once i understand the process...i think i would be able to build a proper re, i once learnt for wdl ol beginners tutorials to make a two oscillator synth but it was a tutorial from start to finished vst...i was able to learn it and then exoand on it and i made a synth with three oscillators and 3filters with parallel serial routings etc...but i need to know how to make a very basic synth or effect

[pongasoft]

This should be a sticky,

I agree this should be sticky

Yan

[pongasoft]

In case you missed it, I have updated the tool to now generate a plugin that builds properly on the new Apple M1 chipset, in case you get a new machine and want to build rack extensions on it

[drno]

Sticky, please

[Billy+]

1. fill out the form
2. download zip file and unzip
3. cd <zip>; run ./configure.py
4. cd build; run ./re.sh install
5. start recon and load the device

I meant to ask this some time ago but will ask now.

Any chance you could give some basic git setup for local control, assuming after the unzip I wanted to create an initial git and the necessary commands to enable fixed points in the development and build.

It's been such a long time since I used git or any version control system.

Thanks Yan, your the greatest!

[joeyluck]

Sticky, please

This is a sticky and has been a sticky...

I think maybe people are looking at the Rack Extensions Forum and not directly at the RE Development and SDK Discussion forum?

[jam-s]

Any chance you could give some basic git setup for local control, assuming after the unzip I wanted to create an initial git and the necessary commands to enable fixed points in the development and build.

It's been such a long time since I used git or any version control system.

https://git-scm.com/doc has got this covered pretty well.

[pongasoft]

1. fill out the form
2. download zip file and unzip
3. cd <zip>; run ./configure.py
4. cd build; run ./re.sh install
5. start recon and load the device

I meant to ask this some time ago but will ask now.

Any chance you could give some basic git setup for local control, assuming after the unzip I wanted to create an initial git and the necessary commands to enable fixed points in the development and build.

It's been such a long time since I used git or any version control system.

Thanks Yan, your the greatest!

git is definitely a difficult tool to really understand and use comfortably. Setting up the blank plugin to be under git is quite simple (once you know what to do...):

- after downloading/unzipping the plugin, cd at the root
- to initialize the repository, enter

Code: Select all

git init

- then to add all the files (the plugin already has a ".gitignore" file which will ignore the files that shouldn't be added) enter

Code: Select all

git add .

- then enter

Code: Select all

git commit

, enter a message and then you have created the repo with all the files checked in

Then it's about working with files and staging/committing when done (of course you can create branches, stashes, etc...)

I am personally using Fork to simplify all this. It is not a free tool, but in my mind for $50 it is totally worth it. It is a great tool. I have been extremely happy with it.

Yan

[Billy+]

Thanks Yan

[pongasoft]

I just found a code breaking bug in re-quickstart (when uploading universal45). In case you are affected, check the commit and apply the same change to your local copy of logging.h

If you generate a brand new plugin, then it is fixed of course.

Yan

[pongasoft]

The latest version of the tool now uses 4.3.0 and Hi Res graphics. It also allows to easily build the low res version if you want to test it out.

I know it is going to sound corny, but it will take you less time to create a plugin, build it, install it and see it working in Recon using re-quickstart than to try to parse the first paragraph of the official "Creating a new project" of the Getting Started manual...

Yan

[pongasoft]

As pointed out in this other thread, there is now a tool that lets you convert an existing rack extension to re-cmake (and re-mock).

[pongasoft]

RE Quick Start now generates a blank plugin with a "Misc" category (for simplicity... I might add the ability to choose the categories at a later stage, but since it is easy to edit info.lua, this is the quickest solution to have an out-of-the-box working device)