vst3sdk VS react-juce

But you don't have only Linux, you have (and probably first) OSX and/or Windows and then Linux, and you need an API that works well in that case. Being an in-process dll/so plugin, while fraught with perils gets you to avoid other issues (state, health, restart, identity, etc.)

Also sometimes you don't have a choice, but have to make a dll, for example:

https://github.com/steinbergmedia/vst3sdk or https://ae-plugins.docsforadobe.dev/ and many others. Sometimes it's the only viable choice.

(I wish most have used grpc/flatbuffers/whatever to communicate, but then every RPC call have to be checked/retried/handled, and or shared memory well handled, with (?) locks, etc. - not a trivial thing for someone who is deeply specialized in making a very good effect/renderer/etc instead of dealing with this extra complexity on top).

Yeah, you can use nordaudio which wraps PortAudio which has support for every major audio back-end. As for writing a VST you may have to find a way to wrap or interface with Steinberg's SDK. MIDI support is possible by using an RtMIDI wrapper, which I haven't linked because there are a few of them out there of varying quality and I don't know which is best because I just use ALSA directly for my purposes.

You can read the VST3 SDK manual for yourself here https://steinbergmedia.github.io/vst3\_doc/vstsdk/index.html and access the source here: https://github.com/steinbergmedia/vst3sdk.

You have to use the steinberger SDK to make a vst

https://github.com/steinbergmedia/vst3sdk

But audio plugins come in many formats.

https://github.com/steinbergmedia/vst3sdk#build-the-examples-on-linux

You can do VST3 as GPL. They dual license it. Lots of legalese to read but definitely an option. https://github.com/steinbergmedia/vst3sdk/issues

If you're keen to stay with HTML/CSS-like UI, then you might want to look at react-juce, which is a React frontend for JUCE. It will likely be more familiar to you than using JUCE directly, though it is not the same as using actual HTML/CSS.

It's probably helpful to have some background context for the development of this

The author of this library is also the author of the React JUCE renderer. It's a toolkit that re-uses React Native's rendering engine to allow you to use JS and React to render JUCE components:

https://www.nickwritesablog.com/blueprint-a-juce-rendering-b...

https://github.com/JoshMarler/react-juce

So at this point, you have a (presumably) C++ JUCE app that is using JS/TS to render the UI. Why not work to move DSP stuff into JS as well, so that you're gluing minimal bits of C++ together?

It's not a far leap from there to here when you follow this down the road.