allow links to Effects in the plug-in folder

[Edgar]

I did some experimentation and found that on Windows, if you put a link to an effect (file–which resides on some other drive) in the plug-ins folder, the plug-in fails to be installed. What happens on Mac and Linux?

See this forum thread for details on allowing said links:
http://forum.audacityteam.org/search.php?keywords=with+.lnk+files+in+the+plug-in+folder
and a patch which works for Windows.

[Edgar]

this patch is functionally the same but is more ready for the time when plug-ins/ might have sub-folders
loadEffectLinks2.patch (4.84 KB)

[Edgar]

I have been informed that on Mac Audacity is not “well behaved” when dealing with links (called aliases on Mac).
Look here for programming details to resolve the problem:
http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Carbon/Reference/Alias_Manager/Reference/reference.html
as I have done with Windows.

@billw58

Ed:
On Mac, you should be able to do this:

• Copy the Audacity plug-ins folder to another drive
• Delete the plug-ins folder from the Applications/Audacity1.3.14 directory (or wherever it was)
• Right-click on the copy of the plug-ins folder on the other drive and select “Make alias”
  – An alias to the plug-ins folder is created called “plug-ins alias”
• Copy the “plug-ins alias” “file” to the place where Audacity expects to find the plug-ins folder
• Rename that copy to “plug-ins”.

On Mac, an “alias” is (as I understand it) similar to a Linux alias - it is a file that points to the real directory/file.

When I launch Audacity with the above changes I get a string of errors - e.g.

15:43:22: Failed to retrieve file times for ‘/Applications/Audacity 1.3.14 Oct 29/plug-ins/analyze.ny’ (error 20: Not a directory)
15:43:22: can’t open file ‘/Applications/Audacity 1.3.14 Oct 29/plug-ins/analyze.ny’ (error 20: Not a directory)

Now, this method works with all well-behaved Mac OS X applications. They recognize the alias file for what it is and read instead from the file/directory it points to. It appears that Audacity is not “well-behaved” in this regard.

The above applies only to plug-ins that are stored in the Audacity plug-ins folder. On Mac the following plug-ins have system locations for storing them, and Audacity searches those locations on start-up: Components (Audio Units), HAL, LADSPA, MAS, VST.

Those folder names can be found inside:
/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins
~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins

Hope this helps.

– Bill

[steve]

Links to effects work in Linux (tested on LMDE 201109)