On Don, 2017-03-02 at 01:03 -0300, Alexandre Torres Porres wrote:

Howdy, I worked on a howto load and install externals tutorial and put it up in here: https://puredata.info/docs/tutorials/FrontPage

Also find it in here https://sites.google.com/site/porres/Using%20Pd% 20Externals.pdf?attredirects=0&d=1

feel free to comment and give some feedbacks

Good work! Great coverage of aspects. Do you plan to convert the final draft into a wikipage? I guess this would ease collaboration on the long run.

My notes:

Re 2.2.1 C):

The global and application specific paths are dependent on how Pd and externals were installed. Everything that comes from the distribution/package manager goes to /usr/, while all self-compiled stuff goes to /usr/local (when intalled system-wide). As a user, you shouldn't never ever touch /usr/ directly.

Application-specific: /usr/lib/puredata/extra   if installed via a package manager (apt-get) /usr/local/lib/pd/extra   if compiled by yourself.

User-specific (needs to be created): ~/.local/lib/pd/extra     (preferred since version Pd-0.47-1)  ~/pd-externals             (deprecated but still usable).       -  Global: /usr/lib/pd-externals       (searched by Pd from package manager) /usr/local/lib/pd-externals   (searched by used-installed Pd)

How to load different library formats

Different library layouts require different ways of loading. I'll try to put together a summary of the different layouts I found "in the wild".

Single-file-per-object libraries

How to load them:

[declare -stdpath libraryname]

Examples:   * virtually anything from Pd-extended   * iemnet   * all abstractions libraries

Notes: It works for both, abstractions and externals, as long as each object has its own file and they're in a folder libraryname. Supposedly, the majority of libraries uses this layout.

Multi-object externals

How to load them:

[declare -stdlib libraryname]

Examples:   *  (can't think of any right now)

Mix of multi-object external and abstractions

How to load them:

[declare -stdpath libraryname -stdlib libraryname]

Examples:    * zexy (not from Pd-extended)   * Gem

Notes: You can test above with zexy. You need both declarations so that you can load both [nop] and [dirac~]. Gem is a special animal again. It uses a trick internally and adds the path automatically. Even if it is a mix of abstractions and a multi- object external, you stil can load it with [declare -stdlib Gem].

Mix of several multi-object externals and abstractions

[declare -stdpath libname -stdlib libname/lib1 -stdlib/lib2 [...]]

Examples:   * iemlib

Note:  If the multi-object external doesn't have the same name as the parent folder, you need to add libname/ prefix to -stdlib.  If you, for instance, only [declare -stdpath iemlib], you can successfully load [hp4_butt~] because it is an abstraction of iemlib, but it throws an error to the Pd-console:

filter~ hp2c $1 $2 $3 $4 ... couldn't create

because it uses [filter~] from iemlib1 internally. So, the proper way to make [hp4_butt~] work is to use:

[declare -stdpath iemlib -stdlib iemlib/iemlib1]

Roman