musescore / musescore/MuseScore

VST Plugin sandboxing

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#20,305 5 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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feature request
Dominant language
C++
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Description

Your idea

Running VST plugins in a separate process, to prevent VST crashing from bringing down the whole MuseScore.
I do hope VST support come stable before anything else, but this may worth considering in the long run.

Problem to be solved

Some crashes are caused by VST, and MuseScore suffers from that. This kind of processing, tho may reduce stability and compatibility in some cases, could defend MuseScore from this kind of crash.

Prior art

BitWig has a good reputation for its plugin sandboxing, and some options are provided to reduce compatibility or performance problems:
https://www.bitwig.com/learnings/plug-in-hosting-crash-protection-in-bitwig-studio-20/
and REAPER do have similar options, tho, from my experience, could be problematic sometime.
image

Additional context

No response

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reviewing MuseScore's existing VST support and the Bitwig and REAPER crash-protection examples linked in the issue. Define how separate-process hosting should preserve MuseScore when a VST crashes, while accounting for the compatibility and performance concerns described.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
cpp
Domain
audio-video-rtc, desktop
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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