sc3-plugins

This repository contains the community collection of unit generator plugins for SuperCollider. An installation extends the functionality of SuperCollider by additional UGens that run on scsynth, the SuperCollider audio synthesis server.

Please note that the UGens in this repository are, on average, less stable and well-maintained than the core collection. Use at your own risk!

Note: Extensions for the SuperCollider programming language are different. They are collected within the Quarks packaging system.

To learn how to write your own plugins, see example-plugins and the "Writing UGens" helpfile.

For community discussion and support see the SuperCollider mailing lists and the github issue tracker.

Installation

Releases are available from the GitHub release page. For older versions (2013), see the Sourceforge project page.

Unzip the release and move it to your SuperCollider extensions folder. You can find it by evaluating

Platform.userExtensionDir

in SuperCollider. To evaluate code in SuperCollder, put your cursor on the line of code and press Cmd+Enter (macOS) or Ctrl+Enter. Alternatively, you may install the extensions system-wide by copying to

Platform.systemExtensionDir

The folder might not exist, so you may need to create it yourself. You can do this in your operating system's file explorer or from within SuperCollider by evaluating:

File.mkdir(Platform.userExtensionDir)

On some operating systems, these directories may be hard to find because they're in hidden folders. You can open the user app support directory (where the Extensions folder is) with the menu item "File->Open user support directory". On macOS, you can open a finder window and press Cmd+Shift+G and enter the name of the directory.

Compile from source

Download both the SuperCollider source and the source for this repository:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/supercollider/sc3-plugins.git
git clone --recursive https://github.com/supercollider/supercollider.git

Be sure to use --recursive, or to initialize the submodules after cloning, otherwise you will not have files that are necessary to build the project.

Like SuperCollider, sc3-plugins uses cmake. Execute the following commands in the directory where you cloned sc3-plugins; replace /path/to/sc/ with the path to the SuperCollider source directory. That will probably be ../../supercollider if you cloned both repositories in the same working directory.

cd sc3-plugins
mkdir build && cd build
# for both scsynth and supernova plugins; set -DSUPERNOVA=OFF to build only scsynth plugins
cmake -DSC_PATH=/path/to/sc/ -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DSUPERNOVA=ON ..
cmake --build . --config Release
# to install the plugins - note: linux users likely need sudo
cmake --build . --config Release --target install

If no SC_PATH is provided the build system assumes the SuperCollider include files are in /usr/include/SuperCollider/.

On macOS, the plugins will end up in sc3-plugins/build/SC3plugins. Copy the SC3plugins folder to your Extensions folder (evaluate Platform.userExtensionDir in SuperCollider to find it).

NOTE: on macOS, if you want to install into CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX, you have to specify it by disabling the IN_PLACE_BUILD cmake option which defaults to ON (see below).

Note for SuperCollider < 3.9.1 The Supernova server on macOS and Windows incorrectly searches for plugins in the /Extensions/plugins directory. The scsynth server correctly searches for plugins in /Extensions. If Supernova is unable to find the sc3-plugins, make sure that they are located in /Extensions/plugins.

See the README in source/HOAUGens for information on compiling the HOAUGens (higher-order ambisonics) subproject.

CMake Options

Set install target
- (default on linux /usr/local)
- cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/local ..
Install in cmake build folder instead of CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX
- (macOS ONLY, default=ON)
- cmake -DIN_PLACE_BUILD=ON
Build the plugins as quarks
- (default=OFF)
- cmake -DQUARKS=ON ..
Build supernova-plugins
- (default=OFF)
- cmake -DSUPERNOVA=ON ..
Build Ladspa UGen
- (macOS AND LINUX ONLY, default=ON)
- sc3-plugins/build/$ cmake -DLADSPA=ON ..
Print all cmake options
- sc3-plugins/build/$ cmake -L ..

Troubleshooting

Known issues

On some Linux distributions it has been reported that Ladspa UGen could prevent SuperCollider server from booting (sc3-plugins/#210, sc3-plugins/#23 and supercollider/#4421). See above how to build sc3-plugins without Ladspa if needed.

Build errors

If you get an error while building that files are missing, it probably means that you didn't clone all the SuperCollider submodules. Fix this by running git submodule update --init in the SuperCollider source directory. If you still have the issue afterwards, try clearing your build directory and starting your build from scratch.

Starting over

If something went wrong and you want to start from scratch, delete everything in the build directory that you made:

make uninstall # only if you ran `make install` before
cd ..
rm -r build

Adding plugins to the repository

A SuperCollider plugin is a collection of UGens (and their supporting files) with a shared prefix in their name. If you add a new plugin, please keep to the following pattern:

Add a folder in the source directory named <prefix>UGens where prefix means whichever standard pattern in the file name you have for your UGens. All source files go into this directory and its subdirectories.
SuperCollider-specific files (.sc|.schelp|...) should be located in a subdirectory named sc.
If your plugin makes use of external libraries that should be part of the sc-plugins sources (e.g. via git-submodule), add them to sc3-plugins/external_libraries/. As an example, the GlitchUGens plugin directory lists as:
- source/GlitchUGens/GlitchUGens.cpp
- source/GlitchUGens/sc/GlitchUGens.sc
- source/GlitchUGens/sc/HelpSource/Classes/GlitchBPF.schelp
- source/GlitchUGens/sc/HelpSource/Classes/GlitchBRF.schelp
- source/GlitchUGens/sc/HelpSource/Classes/GlitchHPF.schelp
- source/GlitchUGens/sc/HelpSource/Classes/GlitchRHPF.schelp
Add your folder to the PLUGIN_DIRS list in sc3-plugins/source/CMakeLists.txt.
For the Quark-installable option, there is a SuperCollider script called Generate_Quark.scd in sc3-plugins/quarks/. Evaluating it indexes the base directory of the extensions for each UGen, and Help-file in each plugin directory. It then creates a help file for your plugin that lists all classes and help files, as well as a .quark file for your plugin in the build/DIRECTORY folder.

Packaging

How to create a DiskImage (OSX)

To create an OSX DiskImage, follow these steps on an OSX machine:

mkdir build && cd build
cmake -DSC_PATH=/path/to/sc/ -DOSX_PACKAGE=1 ..
make && make install

The DiskImage will be generated in ./sc3-plugins/build/build_osx containing

a License.txt,
this README.txt, and
the SC3plugins folder.
Note: the quarks DIRECTORY-folder is also included by default.

How to create a tarball/zip-file

mkdir build && cd build
cmake -DSC_PATH=/path/to/sc/ ..
cpack -G TGZ # `-G ZIP` also works

The package will end up in sc3-plugins/build.

List of plugins

In addition to the plugins listed below, this project contains several FAUST-generated UGens for higher-order ambisonics ("HOAUGens"), which are not built by default. See the README in source/HOAUGens for more information.

An auto-generated list of what plugins are available in this repository, linking to the autogenerated helpfiles:

nilninull/sc3-plugins