I work for an audio company and also have my own apps (for example on Google Play Store). On mobile stores people consider the review system as a bug report system. you can easily see reviews such as:
(1-star) not working! try to steal you credit card details.
For plug-ins I do read and handle some support. most people are very helpful.
You would need to keep some time of your “part-time” to do support and maintaining code if you’d like to keep good reputation.
Usually you’ll have:
- user reports an issue
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option a: user fault. helping them resolves the issue. closed.
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option b: DAW issue that is impossible to fix. you and the user should contact the DAW developer. it might help. (on JUCE I remember 2 cases: 1. closing Cubase caused JUCE plug-ins to crash, 2. Ableton tempo change reported negative sample position). KEEP IN MIND THIS IS LESS COMMON
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option c (MOST COMMON): you do something that on the particular DAW happens on a different sequence.
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option d: JUCE issue. you reproduce it with a simple project or JUCE demo projects and report it on the forum, provide a pull-request or fix snippet, etc…
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Example of common issues:
- Assuming your editor will have samplerate or some data based on prepareToPlay / processBlock on its creation.
- Assuming all hosts provides a specific data (playback state, fps, program changes, etc)
- Assuming the I/O of your plug-in won’t change on the fly.
- Assuming some callback will be used each time playback starts
Suggested Precaution:
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Validate your plug-in thoroughly with
auvaland awesome pluginval. -
Make sure you keep symbols or mapping to symbols (pdb/dSYM/dwarf) so any logs from users would be helpful when needed.