Move midi device support into seperate assembly about drywetmidi

[mdsitton]

Also looking at the code i could see other functionality as fitting into seperate assemblies as well, but those aren't quite as core to making it fully out of the box cross platform.

[melanchall]

Hi,

Yes I know there are libraries with cross-platform devices API. I have plans to make DryWetMIDI fully cross-platform but there are more important tasks at now related to what people really need from the library.

DllImports pointing to WinApi functions are not problem for .NET Core library. More than that, .NET Core itself uses them. Also .NET Core 3 brings WPF and WinForms support, but for Windows only at now. So it's not absolutely bad if some part of a .NET Core library is targeting specific OS :) Of course I'll make it cross-platform somewere in the future.

At the beginning it was supposed that the library will provide API only for MIDI files. But I see that working with MIDI devices (sending/receiving events, playing back) is very important thing that people actively use. So I decided to extend the library to cover more scenarios (and judging by letters from users this decision was right).

[mdsitton]

I'm not saying to remove the midi device support. This is just a suggestion about reorganizing it into smaller chunks of functionality.

[melanchall]

Do you mean to move it to another project inside the solution?

[mdsitton]

Yeah that's what i mean

[melanchall]

It makes sense. I think I'll make a small release soon and then will plan library restructuring.

[andreasbalzer]

Adding on the request, I noticed OutputDevice.GetByName("Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth"); in UWP apps in debug mode works, but release mode fails with "'Unresolved P/Invoke method 'winmm.dll!midiOutGetNumDevs' from this method. Please look for this method in build warnings for more details. '" as UWP has a dedicated abstraction to be used https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/audio-video-camera/midi

A means to use existing cross-platform libraries would be great, or a way to add support for other platforms by app developers.

[melanchall]

@andreasbalzer I've created new issue #95 from your comment.

[melanchall]

@andreasbalzer #95 is fixed.

[dan-oak]

For people like me, who just landed here after finding out about the problem, could you guys maybe suggest how to hack around the missing support problem? Maybe by adding specific dlls to project assemblies or anything else. I'm developing a Linux version of a game and the code is already failing on OutputDevice.GetAll() by trying to call winmm.dll. I'm not familiar currently with a way to package this library (and potentially any other ones down the code) into my assemblies.

[melanchall]

@dan-oak Unfortunately Devices API of the library doesn't support Linux. Right now I'm in process of macOS support, but I can't provide any date when DryWetMIDI will support Linux.

[melanchall]

DryWetMIDI 6.0.0 has been released which has changed internal structure. So now the library includes 4 binaries: 1 main dll and 3 native binaries for cross-platform Devices API. So it seems it's not good to split the library even further.