I need someone to mentor me on Visual Studio builds for Windows 10.
My product “Fathom Synth” has several thousand users worldwide at this point, but I continually have problems with the Windows VST plugin not being detected by hosts in Windows 10.
Currently I am building in Windows 7 with Visual Studio C++ 2012 Express using the Platform Toolset "Visual Studio 2012 (v110)”, not the Windows 7 SDK.
The issue is complicated because I have had to provide my customers with two different versions of my plugin. One built with Runtime Library set to “Multi-threaded DLL (/MD)”, and the other with the same option set to “(/MT)”.
The MD option dynamically links at run-time with the necessary Windows libraries on the user’s target system, and the MT option, of course, statically links the libraries into the DLL.
I have found through considerable experimentation in the field that generally the MD option is better and works with the majority of target systems and hosts, since it links dynamically with the same libraries used by the host on the target machine.
But my Windows 10 users often have to use the MT statically linked build because the MD build will not be detected at all on their system when the host scans for plugins.
I myself as a user have never seen a plugin manufacturer have to provide different builds of their plugin for Windows, so I know I must be doing something deeply wrong.
I do have a Windows 10 partition, so I can actually build my product in Windows 10, but that does not seem to have any effect. Also, unfortunately, I cannot yet afford to use the latest Visual Studio, so the solution I hope can be found in one of the cheaper VS options.
Can one of you who have been in the plugin market longer than I please offer some advice on how it may be possible to provide a single Windows build. One that is easily scanned by all hosts…
Thanks so much!
Everett