It would be great to be able to use Cabbage itself as a plugin (something like NI Reaktor) , with the ability to test and develop csound instruments directly from the DAW.
@rorywalsh do you forsee this possibility? Is it already doable and I missed it?
Cabbage as a VSTi itself?
This has come up from time to time, and is certainly possible, but more work than I have time for at the moment. And the biggest issue is how to automate plugins that are loaded in the Cabbage VSTi. If on the other hand you wish to have your plugin update whilst loaded in a DAW, you can use the secret autoupdate() identifier, i.e,
form size(400, 300), caption("Update me"), autoupdate()
Each time you change the .csd file your plugin is using it will update in the DAW. Note this is only really for development purposes. Also note that you can’t dynamically change the plugin parameter. Therefore this works best when you define a load of generic controls. I know one user who uses this a lot. He uses a template csd file with lots of sliders, numbered from 0 to N with default ranges of 0-1. He can then access them as he develops his instruments, which he writes using Visual Studio code.
I guess it would require quite a big development effort, but the autoupdate feature will help a lot for the moment. Thanks!