I know that AAX has to go in the System-wide folders, but there is an option to install the VST3 and AU in the current user’s ~/Library.
My current thinking is that I prefer the User’s because installing system wide gives other users access to my plugin.
But, I gave my plugin to a friend to test in Logic, and they remarked that a lot of other plugins they bought were in the system wide Library.
Do you install in the system wide /Library, and if so why?
Apps are also installed by default in systemwide /Applications, so there’s no reason for plugins to do it differently. It’s the expected default behavior that anything that’s installed is available to all users. I’ve actually never seen a commercial plugin that installs in user library. Some installers provide an option though (systemwide being the default choice).
Installing systemwide means that for other users on the machine, my plugin will appear in their DAW.
When installing systemwide, an admin password is required during install (no password is required for ~User install), does this give the plugin itself extra permissions that it might need?
Just wondering why systemwide is so favored?
For executables, I guess this allows to save some space since an app (or a plug-in) must exist at least once on a drive anyway. So I find it logical to mutualize disk space.
Data, settings, cache, content, etc is another story though. It’s more likely to be personal and convenient to be stored on a per-user basis.
My settings, presets are stored in the userDocumentsDirectory. At least, I assume this line in my code gives me the User’s ~/documents folder on Mac OS.
juce::File companyDirectory = juce::File::getSpecialLocation(juce::File::userDocumentsDirectory)
Absolutely.
