drobilla.net - Jalv

Jalv 1.8.0

drobilla — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 20:13:00 -0500

Jalv 1.8.0 has been released. Jalv (JAck LV2) is a simple host for LV2 plugins. It runs a plugin, and exposes the plugin ports to the system, essentially making the plugin an application. For more information, see http://drobilla.net/software/jalv.

Changes:

Add "quit" console command
Add AppStream metainfo file
Add Qt6 version
Add missing short versions of command line options
Add option to install tool man pages
Add support for advanced parameters in console frontend
Add support for control inputs with time:beatsPerMinute designation
Add support for control outputs with lv2:latency designation
Avoid over-use of yielding meson options
Build Qt UI with -fPIC
Clean up and strengthen code
Clean up command line help output
Cleanly separate audio thread from the rest of the application
Fix Jack latency recomputation when plugin latency changes
Fix clashing command line options
Fix minor memory leaks
Make help and version commands exit successfully
Only send control messages to designated lv2:control ports
Only send position to ports that explicitly support it
Reduce Jack process callback overhead
Remove Gtk2 interface
Remove limits on the size of messages sent from plugin to UI
Remove transport position dumping from Jack process callback
Replace use of deprecated Gtk interfaces
Rework Gtk3 interface into a relatively modern Gtk application
Rewrite man pages in mdoc
Simplify and unify plugin and preset command-line arguments
Switch to external zix dependency
Use Gtk switches instead of checkboxes for toggle controls
Use fewer platform-specific APIs
Use portable zix filesystem API

Jalv 1.6.8

drobilla — Sat, 10 Sep 2022 00:43:00 -0400

Jalv 1.6.8 has been released. Jalv (JAck LV2) is a simple host for LV2 plugins. It runs a plugin, and exposes the plugin ports to the system, essentially making the plugin an application. For more information, see http://drobilla.net/software/jalv.

Changes:

Add Gtk plugin selector UI and desktop file
Add missing option in console help output
Add version option to console executable
Build Qt interface as C++14
Change no-menu short option to m to avoid clash with jack-name
Clean up and modernize code
Fix "preset" console command when "presets" hasn't been called
Fix MSVC build
Fix atom buffer alignment
Fix crash when running jalv without arguments
Fix man page headers
Fix memory leaks
Fix outdated man pages
Fix spurious transport messages
Fix thread-safety of plugin/UI communication rings
Flush stdout after printing control values in console interface
Print status information consistently to stdout
Propagate worker errors to the scheduler when possible
Remove Gtkmm interface
Remove Qt4 support
Support both rdfs:label and lv2:name for port group labels
Switch to meson build system

Jalv 1.6.6

drobilla — Thu, 07 Jan 2021 22:05:00 -0500

Jalv 1.6.6 has been released. Jalv is a simple but fully featured LV2 host for Jack which exposes plugin ports to Jack, essentially making any LV2 plugin function as a Jack application. For more information, see http://drobilla.net/software/jalv.

Changes:

Add a command line argument to select a specific UI
Explicitly support lv2:inPlaceBroken
Ignore ports with nonsense lv2:control designations
Remove Jack session support
Support port events for ui:showInterface UIs

Jalv 1.6.4

drobilla — Sun, 10 Nov 2019 21:56:00 -0500

Jalv 1.6.4 has been released. Jalv is a simple but fully featured LV2 host for Jack which exposes plugin ports to Jack, essentially making any LV2 plugin function as a Jack application. For more information, see http://drobilla.net/software/jalv.

Changes:

Support rdfs:label for port groups
Use screen refresh rate with Gtk3 and Qt5

Jalv 1.6.2

drobilla — Thu, 06 Jun 2019 20:38:00 -0400

Jalv 1.6.2 has been released. Jalv is a simple but fully featured LV2 host for Jack which exposes plugin ports to Jack, essentially making any LV2 plugin function as a Jack application. For more information, see http://drobilla.net/software/jalv.

Changes:

Add jalv -i option to ignore stdin for background use
Add several commands to console interface
Add support for running as an internal Jack client (thanks Timo Wischer)
Add support for underscore in port names on command line (thanks Jośe Fernando Moyano)
Fix Jack deactivation
Fix compilation with recent Gtkmm versions that require C++11
Fix potential crash when closed with worker (thanks JP Cimalando)
Fix potential hang after Ctrl-c in console interface (thanks Laxmi Devi)
Make Suil dependency optional
Remove support for deprecated event and uri-map extensions

Jalv 1.6.0

drobilla — Wed, 04 Jan 2017 17:24:00 -0500

Jalv 1.6.0 has been released. Jalv is a simple but fully featured LV2 host for Jack which exposes plugin ports to Jack, essentially making any LV2 plugin function as a Jack application. For more information, see http://drobilla.net/software/jalv.

Changes:

Add PortAudio backend (compile time option, audio only)
Add Qt5 version
Add command prompt to console version for changing controls
Add generic Qt control UI from Amadeus Folego
Add option to print plugin trace messages
Allow Jack client name to be set from command line (thanks Adam Avramov)
Exit GUI versions on interrupt
Exit on Jack shutdown (patch from Robin Gareus)
Fix memory error on preset save resulting in odd bundle names
Fix semaphore correctness issues
Fix unreliable UI state initialization (patch from Hanspeter Portner)
Improve preset support
Print colorful log if output is a terminal
Report Jack latency (patch from Robin Gareus)
Set Jack port order metadata
Support CV ports if Jack metadata is enabled (patch from Hanspeter Portner)
Support numeric and string plugin properties (event-based control)
Support thread-safe state restoration
Update UI when internal plugin state is changed during preset load
Use moc-qt4 if present for systems with multiple Qt versions

Jalv 1.4.6

drobilla — Fri, 08 Aug 2014 22:30:00 -0400

Jalv 1.4.6 has been released. Jalv is a simple but fully featured LV2 host for Jack which exposes plugin ports to Jack, essentially making any LV2 plugin function as a Jack application. For more information, see http://drobilla.net/software/jalv.

Changes:

Add option to print control output changes to stdout
Add support for data-access extension (based on patch by Filipe Coelho)
Generate Qt moc nonsense at build time for broader compatibility
Set port pretty names via new Jack metadata API
Show newly saved presets in the preset menu
Support new UI show/hide interface in console version
Support saving the same preset several times
Update for latest LV2 Atom Object simplifications
Update man pages and console jalv help output for new options
Upgrade to waf 1.7.16

Jalv 1.4.4

drobilla — Sat, 04 Jan 2014 21:11:00 -0500

Jalv 1.4.4 has been released. Jalv is a simple but fully featured LV2 host for Jack which exposes plugin ports to Jack, essentially making any LV2 plugin function as a Jack application. For more information, see http://drobilla.net/software/jalv.

Changes:

Add --no-menu option for jalv.gtk
Add -c option for setting controls from the command line
Don't expose non-MIDI event ports to Jack
Hide controls for ports with notOnGUI property in generic UI (based on patch from Robin Gareus)
Preset menu support for Qt (patch from Timo Westkämper)
Support ui:portMap feature to allow UIs to avoid hard-coded port indices (useful for compatibility and separately distributed UIs)

Jalv 1.4.2

drobilla — Fri, 09 Aug 2013 14:40:00 -0400

Jalv 1.4.2 has been released. Jalv is a simple but fully featured LV2 host for Jack which exposes plugin ports to Jack, essentially making any LV2 plugin function as a Jack application. For more information, see http://drobilla.net/software/jalv.

Changes:

Add command-line option to control UI update frequency
Fix crash when running "jalv" with bad command line arguments
Fix default setting for non-sequential enumeration ports (patch from Robin Gareus)
Fix parameter changes with Qt UI
Fix potential crash with UIs and debug printing
Nicer printing of atom messages with -d
Support rsz:minimumSize for atom and event ports
Upgrade to waf 1.7.11
Work around Gtk bug for labels on sliders (patch from Robin Gareus)

Jalv 1.4.0

drobilla — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 03:35:00 -0500

Jalv 1.4.0 has been released. Jalv is a simple but fully featured LV2 host for Jack which exposes plugin ports to Jack, essentially making any LV2 plugin function as a Jack application. For more information, see http://drobilla.net/software/jalv.

Changes:

Add menu bar and pass parent widget in Qt version for true UI embedding
Add spinbuttons for precisely setting control values
Group controls under headings if port group information is available
Make URI map thread-safe, fixing occasional crashes for plugins with UIs
Send time information to plugin when Jack tempo changes
Support state:loadDefaultState
Update to waf 1.7.8 and autowaf r90
Use a more efficient dense layout for controls

Jalv 1.2.0

drobilla — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 22:38:00 -0400

Jalv 1.2.0 has been released. Jalv is a simple but fully featured LV2 host for Jack which exposes plugin ports to Jack, essentially making any LV2 plugin function as a Jack application. For more information, see http://drobilla.net/software/jalv.

Changes:

Add Gtk3 UI
Fix Jack Session support
Notify plugins of Jack transport changes by sending events (an atom:Blank with properties from the LV2 time extension)
Port to MinGW
Refuse to instantiate plugins which require unsupported features
Support LV2 buf-size extension (with all features)
Support lv2:sampleRate control ports.
Tolerate loading presets with port values that aren't xsd:decimal
Tune UI update rate and ring size based on JACK rate and MIDI buffer size to handle the handle the maximum message rate the plugin can send.

Jalv 1.0.0

drobilla — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 22:42:00 -0400

Jalv 1.0.0 has been released. Jalv is a simple but fully featured LV2 host for Jack which exposes plugin ports to Jack, essentially making any LV2 plugin function as a Jack application. For more information, see http://drobilla.net/software/jalv.