comparison build/README.msvc @ 239:cc467e52da4c

* Add platform README files

+
+The Vamp Plugin SDK -- Platform Notes for Visual C++ on Windows
+===============================================================
+
+Visual C++ Project Files
+------------------------
+
+Three Visual C++ project files are included with the SDK:
+
+ - build/VampPluginSDK.vcproj
+
+   This builds the plugin SDK into a single static library, but does
+   not build the example plugins, the host SDK, or the host.  (We
+   recommend using static linkage for the SDK rather than distributing
+   it as a DLL, particularly when building plugins.)
+
+ - build/VampHostSDK.vcproj
+
+   This builds the host SDK into a single static library, but does not
+   build the plugin SDK, example plugins, or host.
+
+ - build/VampExamplePlugins.vcproj
+
+   This builds the example plugins DLL, but does not build the plugin
+   or host SDKs or the host.  You don't need to build the plugin SDK
+   before this, because this project simply includes the plugin SDK
+   files rather than using the library.
+
+Of course, when using Visual Studio or another IDE to build a plugin
+or host using the SDK, you may simply add the .h and .cpp files in the
+vamp-sdk or vamp-hostsdk directories to your existing project.  This
+is the approach taken in the VampExamplePlugins project.
+
+As the command-line host has additional library dependencies (namely
+libsndfile), no pre-packaged project is included to build it.
+
+
+Installing the Example Plugins
+------------------------------
+
+To install the example plugins so you can load them in Vamp hosts,
+copy the files
+
+   build\release\vamp-example-plugins.dll
+and
+   examples\vamp-example-plugins.cat
+
+to
+
+   C:\Program Files\Vamp Plugins
+
+
+Plugin Linkage
+--------------
+
+Vamp plugins are distributed as dynamic libraries (DLLs).  A properly
+packaged Vamp plugin DLL should export exactly one public symbol,
+namely the Vamp API entry point vampGetPluginDescriptor.
+
+One nice tidy way to achieve this with Visual Studio is to add the
+linker option /EXPORT:vampGetPluginDescriptor to your project.  (All
+of the other symbols will be properly hidden, because that is the
+default for the Visual Studio linker.)  The included example plugins
+project in build/VampExamplePlugins.vcproj does this.
+
+Alternatively, you may modify vamp/vamp.h to add the
+__declspec(dllexport) attribute to the vampGetPluginDescriptor
+declaration.  This is not present by default, because it isn't
+portable and, as we only want one symbol exported, the above linker
+option works equally well without code changes.
+
+(If you don't take at least one of these actions, your plugin library
+simply will not load in any host.)
+
+
+Using MinGW/Cygwin
+------------------
+
+Refer to README.linux for build instructions using the GNU toolchain.
+