Unable to load VST3 when running through CircleCI

[czerpa-antdev]

Overview

• Currently working on running pedalboard in CircleCI. This one is setup to instantiate a MacOS image with M1 hardware.
• I am running into loading plugin issues.
• This issue is not reproducible in my local Mac Machine or in Circle CI running on a Mac machine (running server) which we physically own.
• Fortunately, CircleCI allows the option to SSH into the virtual machine while active. So I am able to SSH and run the steps manually for debugging.
• After two solid days of debugging and experimenting I have not found a solution or workaround. I was hoping I could get some support here.

Pre-requisite

• SSH into the VM.
• Create a virtual environment
  • python3 -m venv venv
• Activate it
  • source venv/bin/activate
• Upgrade pip
  • pip install --upgrade pip
• Install Pedalboard
  • pip install pedalboard
• Run Python
  • python3

Code:

Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> from pedalboard import load_plugin
>>> vst = load_plugin("/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3/cool_plugin.vst3")

Using "~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3/cool_plugin.vst3" also failed to load. Yes, I copied the plug-in before attempting.

Error:

  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/Users/distiller/.pyenv/versions/3.11.5/lib/python3.11/site-packages/pedalboard/_pedalboard.py", line 781, in load_plugin
    raise ImportError(
ImportError: Failed to load plugin as VST3Plugin or AudioUnitPlugin. Errors were:
    VST3Plugin: Unable to load plugin /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3/Auto-Tune Pro.vst3: unsupported plugin format or load failure.
    AudioUnitPlugin: Unable to load plugin /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3/Auto-Tune Pro.vst3: unsupported plugin format or load failure. macOS requires plugin files to be moved to /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components/ or ~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components/ before loading.

What I have tried so far:

1. Running in my local Mac Machine (M3 chip), I am able to successfully run the code without problems.
2. Tried in different version of python3:
   • 3.8
   • 3.9
   • 3.10
   • 3.11
   • Issue reproducible in all.
3. Setup CircleCI to run with another Mac Machine we physically own as a server.
   • We are able to load the plugin, no problems.

Interesting Debugging Observations

1. When running from the terminal in a machine where issue is NOT reproducible, I noticed that from pedalboard import load_plugin call took longer to load (about 5 to 10 seconds)
   • I believe Pedalboard in the background is generating some cached python files for loading VST3.
   • Namely: VST3Plugin.py
   • This is generated off pedalboard_native.cpython-311-darwin.so
   • When running in my local Mac Machine in Pycharm I can easily find this file
   • ~/Library/Caches/JetBrains/PyCharmCE2023.2/python_stubs/486492554/pedalboard_native/VST3Plugin.py
   • Any ideas how to find it when using Terminal??
     2. Using pdb module for debugging in the terminal. I am noticing the failure occurs as soon as the VST3Plugin class gets initiated

   • # This should be line 765 thru 770 in <path_to_project>/venv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/pedalboard/_pedalboard.py
     return plugin_class(  # type: ignore
              path_to_plugin_file=path_to_plugin_file,  # type: ignore
              parameter_values=parameter_values,  # type: ignore
              plugin_name=plugin_name,  # type: ignore
              initialization_timeout=initialization_timeout,  # type: ignore
          )  # type: ignore 

   • Any ideas what that could mean? My hypothesis is a based on above cached files but I am not sure how to validate that.

Thanks in advance for the support

[czerpa-antdev]

closing issue, turns out desired VST3 plugin is unable to run in a virtual machine by design as it enforces the license on the machine but it's missing. Not pedalboard related.