(Host) plugin gui problems

[0x0015]

Hello,

I have been developing a simple host, and want to display the plugin gui editor in a simple popup window. Trying to be cross platform, I am doing window creation with the SDL3 library (getting the native HWND/X11 Window through SDL_GetWindowProperties). This has led me to two distinct (but potentially related) ploblems:

The first is that when building for windows, although the windows appear and the interface does display in it, for some plugins (eg. Surge XT) the interface does not update visually (although input seems to be received as parameters will change. Other plugins (eg. Vital) do not have this issue (potentially because it's rendering through an OGL/vulkan/DX context?). #331 suggested that using SDL at all is a bad idea, so I have added simple dedicated win32 window creation and event polling (CreateWindowEx, PeekMessage/TranslateMessage/DispatchMessage) which did not yield differing results from SDL.

The second is that when building for linux, (so X11) for Vital the window is created and displayed, but does not receive any mouse/keyboard input. And with Surge it doesn't ever get drawn to. I tend not to think that SDL3 window creation is inhibiting the events from reaching vital (for example using the exact same window creation for a VST plugin receives them fine). Additionally #135 indicated that timer_suport and posix_fd_support would be needed for linux support, so I have implemented those (alongside thread_check, log, audio_ports_config, note_ports, and gui).

Additionally, as I am effectively trying to create a floating window, I have tried checking for that but no plugin I've tried had it enabled.

I am not super familiar with clap as a library (or host/plugin development overall) so I am sure that I have missed something simple...

[defiantnerd]

You could check out the clap-wrapper standalone, which does allow plugin gui via GTK3 on Linux.

[0x0015]

That was actually a great suggestion! I was able to verify that my initialization procedure was basically exactly the same, and on the linux side was able to pin it down to my implementation of the timer code not firing (oops).

Just glad I wasn't completely missing an extension or something.

As for windows surge not updating the UI, I tried forcing some repaint logic (mirroring this https://github.com/free-audio/clap-wrapper/blob/62bf4f193d8dac354a946c1e0cffda9174317042/src/detail/standalone/windows/windows_standalone.cpp#L396) to call every frame, but it didn't seem to help.

[baconpaul]

Yeah you need timer and posix fd for uis to work reliably in Linux both

the wrapper standalone implements then