Cargo.toml declared Apache-2.0 while the default build linked vst3-sys,
whose bindings are GPLv3 — so the artifact a fresh clone produced could
not legally be distributed under the licence the repo claimed. A template
should not hand that trap to every project cloned from it.
NIH-plug already anticipates this: its `vst3` feature exists, in upstream's
own words, "mostly for GPL-compliance reasons". Taking `default-features =
false` and re-exporting `vst3` as a local opt-in makes the default build
CLAP-only and genuinely Apache-2.0 clean, while `--features vst3` remains
one flag away for anyone who accepts GPLv3.
Gating the feature rather than relicensing keeps the decision with whoever
uses the template. Reversing it is a one-line default plus removing two
cfg attributes, where relicensing to GPLv3 now would commit every
downstream plugin to that choice.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01WHt4DykxXaQnyaJfyS8KCn
Two things in the build instructions were wrong rather than merely thin.
The stated output paths (`nih_plug_template.vst3`) are not what the
bundler produces: `cargo xtask bundle` names artifacts from the `name` key
in bundler.toml, so a fresh clone actually yields `Plugin Name.vst3`.
Anyone following the deploy steps verbatim would copy a path that does not
exist. The VST3 artifact is also a directory bundle, so the `cp` needed
`-r` to work at all.
The egui editor pulls in baseview and x11, whose build scripts abort on a
missing `gl.pc` with a pkg-config error that says nothing about this
project. Naming the packages up front turns a confusing first-build
failure into a one-line fix.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01WHt4DykxXaQnyaJfyS8KCn
mikkeli
irene