[BUG] SDK does not clean up and unload after last release, and has issues with multiple initializations (was SDK initializer for C++ does not call Shutdown())

[Psychlist1972]

Reported by Reuben Thomas (JUCE) on Discord

I'm working on MIDI support again, and just got round to trying out DP8 with the new Initialization.hpp. For the most part the upgrade was straightforward, but I ran into an issue where my test app would crash on shutdown. I can avoid the crash by uncommenting m_initializer->Shutdown() in MidiDesktopAppSdkInitializer::ShutdownSdkRuntime(), so I'm wondering whether this was commented out accidentally, or whether just calling Release() is supposed to be sufficient, or whether I'm using the Initializer incorrectly.

follow-up:

Sorry to bump, but I'm still seeing crashes on Win11 Canary and the newest NuGet package when m_initializer->Shutdown() is commented out. Is this intentional? Should I be calling Shutdown myself somewhere?

[Psychlist1972]

I'll need to investigate why I commented that out to begin with. Shutdown should be used to clean up. Thanks for reporting.

[Psychlist1972]

Looking into this some more. I realize now why shutdown was commented out. This fails in nested initialization scenarios (host initializes, plugin initializes). I'm looking into it.

[Psychlist1972]

Yeah. I see I left a very important TODO in here. Working on this. Should have a fix in a few days at most, after testing.

The code currently in Shutdown should only happen after the last release. Good catch on bringing up lifetime issues. This was hiding waiting for a multiple-initialization scenario

[Psychlist1972]

Rewrote a bunch of code in the COM component, as the ref count was always off by one due to some opinions in the winrt::implements base class. Also updated the .hpp to release the reference properly. Passes unit tests for ref counts, multiple calls within a process (plugins and host, for example), nested calls, etc. Type resolution works correctly.