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PLUGIN_DEVELOPMENT_FRAMEWORKS.md

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Plugin Development Frameworks

A list of software stacks/frameworks used to make audio plugins with/without GUIs, along with their pros and cons.

CPLUG

  • A simple wrapper for the VST3, Audio Unit v2 & CLAP plugin formats.
  • Uses a simple C API that makes it easy to provide bindings to other languages.
  • Only provides the plumbing and doesn't provide a GUI out of the box. You can add your own GUI layer of choice on top. (See the Bring Your Own OpenGL Context section below.)
  • Fully open-source using a permissive license (including a public domain license).
  • Very new and experimental. It is missing a few features at the time of this writing.
  • Targets Mac and Windows. It does not currently target Linux, but it is (maybe) on the roadmap.

DISTRHO Plugin Framework

  • Full-stack framework with GUI in C++.
  • Fully open-source using a permissive license.
  • Targets LADSPA, DSSI, LV2, VST2, VST3, CLAP, and Jack plugin formats.
  • Targets Linux, Mac, and Windows platforms.
  • DISTRHO Dear Plugins - A collection of plugins demonstrating how to use the Dear ImGui library with the DPF framework. Still a work in progress.

Dplug

  • Full-stack framework with GUI in the D programming language.
  • Fully open-source using a permissive license.
  • The GUI framework has fancy physically-modeled rendering inspired by game engines.
  • Targets VST2, VST3, AUv2, AAX, and LV2 plugin formats.
  • Targets Linux, Mac, Windows, and Raspberry Pi platforms.
  • Used by several commercial plugins.

iPlug2

  • Full-stack framework in C++ with GUI.
  • Fully open-source using a permissive license.
  • Targets VST2, VST3, AUv2, AUv3, AAX and the Web Audio Module (WAM) plugin formats (also support for CLAP is in the works).
  • Targets Mac, Windows, iOS, and Web. It does not currently target Linux.

JUCE

  • Full-stack framework with GUI in C++.
  • Open source with mixed licensing. It's free if you distribute your plugins open-source under the GPLv3 license, but you have to pay for a hefty license if you want to distribute your plugins closed-source.
  • Targets VST2, VST3, AUv2, AUv3, RTAS, AAX, and LV2 plugin formats. Unofficial support for the CLAP standard is also in the works here.
  • Targets Linux, Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, and Raspberry Pi platforms.
  • Well known in the industry, and many commercial plugins are built with it.

JUCE Resources

  • Awesome JUCE - A large list of resources for JUCE.
  • Cookiejuce - Another good template generator. It's a hard fork of Pamplejuce with a lot of opinionated stuff added/changed.
  • JIVE - Framework that makes it easier to create GUIs in JUCE.
  • Pamplejuce - Handy code template to help get you started.

NIH-plug

  • Full-stack and modular framework with GUI in Rust.
  • Fully open-source using a permissive license.
  • Targets CLAP and VST3 plugin formats.
  • Targets Linux, Mac, and Windows platforms.
  • Has several different options for GUI such as Vizia, Iced, egui, and Slint. (Slint requires a paid license if you want to distribute your plugin closed-source.)
    • If you use Iced, there are also audio-specific widgets in the iced_audio extension.
  • It's still somewhat experimental and is missing some more specialized features, but it's usable.
  • There is now a cookiecutter template to help get you started faster.

If you're interested in Rust, Coupler is an interesting new framework to look out for.

The DIY Route

Are you hardcore and have a lot of time on your hands? Well then do I have the solution for you!

Jokes aside, this is a legitimate route you can take. Just be prepared for the extra boilerplate work involved, especially if you want to have cross-platform and/or cross-API support. You can get quite far by using one of the GUI libraries listed below. (Though I advise against creating your own GUI library unless you do actually have a lot of time on your hands.) It can also be a fun and valuable experience learning how plugin APIs actually work under the hood.

Here are some resources that can make your life easier:

Bring Your Own OpenGL Context

A common question that gets asked is "How can I use X GUI library to make my plugin GUI?

Unfortunately, a big blocker that prevents many of the popular GUI libraries from working in a plugin context is that most are designed with the assumption that they own the event loop. But in a plugin context, it's the host that owns the event loop, not the plugin. So unless the GUI library was designed from the get-go to handle this use case, it's difficult to add it after the fact.

Only the CLAP plugin format went out of its way to allow plugins to own their own event loop. Even then, it's still discouraged since it prevents the host from seamlessly integrating with the plugin window (i.e. FL Studio drawing a window border around the plugin window with extra useful controls at the top of the window).

Here is a list of compatible GUI libraries you can use for your audio plugins.

  • Dear ImGui - A very popular immediate mode GUI library with an active community. There are bindings to many other languages available.
    • clap-imgui - A minimal example of a CLAP plugin with ImGui.
  • egui - An ImGui-inspired immediate mode GUI library for Rust.
  • Iced - A cross-platform GUI library for Rust focused on simplicity and type-safety.
  • Nuklear - Another popular immediate mode GUI library. Written in pure C, and bindings to many other languages are available.
  • Pugl - Minimal GUI layer made specifically for plugins.
  • Qt - It's possible to use Qt for CLAP plugins (though I'm not sure about other plugin formats).
  • raygui - Another lightweight immediate mode GUI library written in pure C.
  • robtk - A minimal layer for creating GUIs for LV2 plugins.
  • Slint - Robust and feature-packed declarative GUI library with bindings for Rust and C++. It's free to use for open source projects, but it requires a paid license to use for closed-source projects.
  • Vizia - A declarative GUI library for Rust. Comes with a baseview backend built-in.

"I am hardcore and want to make my own GUI solution"

There are plenty of options that allow you to just draw shapes and text to the screen.

  • bgfx - Low-level cross platform graphics library that abstracts over different graphics APIs. Has a sizeable community, and contains bindings to various programming languages.
  • Cairo - An old but widely used vector graphics library. It is not hardware-accelerated though, so it is quite slow. But on the flip side not being hardware-accelerated removes the headaches involved with graphics drivers.
  • femtovg - An OpenGL vector graphics rendering library written in Rust, based on NanoVG.
  • Lyon - A tessellation library written in Rust. It simply outputs a list of triangles for the GPU to render.
  • NanoVG - Vector graphics rendering library for OpenGL.
  • Skia - Hardware-accelerated 2D vector graphics library. Built by Google to power Chrome and Flutter. It has a relatively large binary size though.
  • Sokol - Low-level cross platform graphics library that abstracts over different graphics APIs. Contains bindings to various programming languages.
  • vg-renderer - A vector graphics renderer for bgfx.
  • wgpu - Low-level cross platform graphics library for Rust that abstracts over different graphics APIs. Inspired by WebGPU.