I'm happy to announce the second release of Librekontrol! Librekontrol is a programmable controller editor for GNU/Linux. This is primarily a bugfix release, but a couple new features made their way in.

Please note that this should be considered alpha software. Assume that you might encounter bugs and that the software might fail spectacularly if you try to do something particularly clever with it. It's certainly ready to be tested and played around with, and indeed, you can already start using it regularly for everyday projects. You probably shouldn't depend on it for your big gig at the warehouse rave next weekend, though.

Note that the code also hasn't seen any real optimization effort, so latency will not be ideal if you're using it to configure a device that you will play in real-time.

Of course, all of these problems would make great entry points into helping out with Librekontrol's development. Find a bug, zap it, and share your fix for the greater good!

Please also consider helping out by completing the existing device definitions if you own any of them (all devices from Native Instruments and by contributing new device definitions.

Download Librekontrol 0.2 [sig]

What's new in 0.2

New Features

New make-finite-midi-control-abs-knob procedure

The make-finite-midi-control-abs-knob procedure generates a callback function that helps to make an infinite rotary encoder function as a finite MIDI control knob. That is, if you have a knob on your device that can rotate infinitely in either direction, a callback produced by this procedure will ensure that no matter how much you rotate the knob, say, right, the value will stop at its maximum. Normally, these knobs would "loop around" and go from the max value back down to zero before increasing again.

System process-related callback functions take a command-generating procedure

This is a breaking change! Your config will need to be updated.

Previously, all callback functions that spawn system processes (e.g. system-button or system-abs-knob) would take a command as a simple string (e.g. "echo 'hello'"). For knob-based callback functions, where this command is passed the knob's value, this was inflexible. Those callback functions now take an argument cmdproc which takes a procedure as its value. The procedure takes a single argument (the knob's value) and returns a string representing the system command to call. See the example in examples/ni-ak1-playerctl.scm for an illustration of how this is useful.

reset-idle-hook and reset-exit-hook take only 1 argument

Previously, these procedures required specifying an event ID, which of course isn't necessary for resetting device-wide hooks.

The idle hook is cleared before running exit hooks

This avoids the possibility where the idle hook is triggered before all of the exit hooks have finished.

Remap event failures generate more useful error messages

This might be helpful for troubleshooting if permissions are not set up properly for Librekontrol.

Bug fixes

Trying to set or read the ALSA Ctl of a control without an associated Ctl no longer fails

Some safety nets have been put into place to make sure that controls without associated ALSA Ctls are not manipulated as if they do have Ctls.

Trying to add more procedures to an hook after the initial setup no longer fails

Init procedures now work properly

Native Instruments Rig Kontrol 3 device definitions are now correct

Thanks to user fratto, the device definitions (Ctls, input, controls) for the NI Rig Kontrol 3 are now correct and more accurately named.

Native Instruments Rig Kontrol 2 device definitions are now better

ALSA Ctl definitions for the NI Rig Kontrol 2 were corrected and some of the inputs have been renamed following the RK3 fixes. However, the labeling of some Ctls / inputs may be incorrect still (e.g. in the RK3, the LED that the Linux kernel driver calls "LED 1" is actually "LED 5" on the device). If you have an RK2 and you can help resolve this once and for all, please get in touch.