FR: Ability to use a single installation for standalone and vst

[Juanjo]

First of all let me say that I'm enjoying the Usine concept very much, and the implementation and development is so fast that I cannot even blink without a new Usine update being available: guys you're almost outpacing Reaper! Very good job.

My problem is simple: I like to use both the standalone AND the vst versions, but as of now they seem to be designed to function completely independent from each other. In some cases this might be useful, but in other cases this might be inconvenient, i.e. for usability reasons I'd prefer to have a shared installation but as of now I have to download, install and configure both versions separately.

I believe this might be doable now by simply copying the standalone folder over the vst one, but i see 2 problems with this:

1) I'm not sure that the config options would "merge", probably there would be some issues
2) This would have to be done within the VSTPlugins folder, which is suboptimal as it means to add a few hundred new files to that folder (hence slowing down plugin scanning for some hosts) including several non-plugin dll files (which also interfere with plugin scanning in some hosts and can even lead to crashes).

For all these reasons, I would suggest to implement the ability to "merge" both standalone and vst installations into one single folder, OUTSIDE the vstplugins folder. For example this might be easily done by implementing a simple .ini text file to go along with each usinevst dll (using the same filename as the dll). This file would include a path to the actual installation folder which could be anywhere, allowing:
a) to place only 2 files (the dll and the ini file) within the vstplugins folder
b) to have as many separate vst installations/setups as needed, by simply renaming the dll/ini file pairs and pointing the paths within the ini files to different folders.


I believe I've mentioned this before somewhere, but I felt like submitting it as an actual FR. It's just an idea and I totally understand that it might not be urgent or even desirable for other users, but anyway...

[senso]

hello,
personally I like the 'Unzip and play' approach of Usine:
- we can have several versions of Usine installed on the PC
- very fast and clean

I understand your suggestions. I'll try to find something but it's not so easy because I don't want to create a 'installer' executable file. Also, the configuration file is not the same. OK, it looks like 'small details' but in fact not really.

be patient

[Juanjo]

Thanks for the response, I perfectly understand your point of view... and I'm totally with you on the "unzip and play" approach and the dislike for installers... actually I just wanted to suggest a way to refine your approach so the vstplugins folder doesn't get cluttered and all the files duplicated innecessarily...

In any case, looking forward to whatever you come up with

[Juanjo]

Hi there,
I was going to submit this as a new FR, then I remembered I already had so I might as well bump it... I hear you guys are working on Usine 6, any chance that this issue might be taken into consideration?

Cheers,
JJ.

[Juanjo]

I was thinking more about it and I remembered that U-HE (and Ohmforce I believe) uses a simple system which might be perfect for Usine... they also need to put a lot of files within reach of VST dlls and they do it as follows:

- By default, they put everything in a folder besides the dll, exactly as Usine does right now.

- But they allow to move the whole folder out of the way (to wherever the user might want to put it) and replace it by a simple Windows shortcut pointing to the new folder location.


This way you have both advantages: by default it works exactly as Usine does right now, but it also allows users to unclutter the vstplugins folder by moving the usine folder out of the way in a very simple an elegant fashion...

Just an idea.

[nay-seven]

Thanks for your ideas !

[Thomas Helzle]

I was thinking more about it and I remembered that U-HE (and Ohmforce I believe) uses a simple system which might be perfect for Usine... they also need to put a lot of files within reach of VST dlls and they do it as follows:

- By default, they put everything in a folder besides the dll, exactly as Usine does right now.

- But they allow to move the whole folder out of the way (to wherever the user might want to put it) and replace it by a simple Windows shortcut pointing to the new folder location.


This way you have both advantages: by default it works exactly as Usine does right now, but it also allows users to unclutter the vstplugins folder by moving the usine folder out of the way in a very simple an elegant fashion...

Just an idea.

Very good idea. I like the way u-he does it in the new installers a lot - have just the VST dlls in your VSTplugins directories and all other resources (that are 32/64 bit independent) in a dedicated folder that you simply point to by a shortcut (which could be an .ini file just as well. My u-he data folder contains almost 40,000 files, and is about 600 MB big, so it was quite a relieve to no longer have this multiple times, trying to keep things in sync

Usine is more complicated, but the gain would be even larger, since I would have 32 and 64 Bit standalone and VST and VSTi installed... which boils down to 6 times the data.

For some people the selfcontained installation of Usine may be important, but for me it always was a bit of a drag, having all those versions installed which all come with those huge appendages...

Great idea Juanjo!

Cheers,

Tom