rusty_link

rustylink is a Rust wrapper of abllink, which is a C 11 extension for Ableton Link, provided by Ableton. This library attempts to be mostly unopinionated and plain in copying the functionality of abl_link, while providing some of Rust's safety guarantees.

Ableton Link is a technology that synchronizes musical beat, tempo, phase, and start/stop commands across multiple applications running on one or more devices. Applications on devices connected to a local network discover each other automatically and form a musical session in which each participant can perform independently: anyone can start or stop while still staying in time. Anyone can change the tempo, the others will follow. Anyone can join or leave without disrupting the session.

Example

To run the examples, clone this repository and change into its directory. Then fetch the Ableton Link source by initializing the git submodules with:

git submodule update --init --recursive

This crate includes a Rust port of the simple 'LinkHut' C example . To run it:

cargo run --release --example link_hut_silent

There is also a Rust port of the more complex 'LinkHut' C++ example, which has sound. Run it like this:

cargo run --release --example link_hut

Requirements

Requires a recent version of CMake (3.14 or newer) to be installed and available in your terminal. Test with cmake --version.

Safety

Thread and Realtime Safety

'abl_link.h' has doc comments about thread and realtime safety on some of its functions. Those comments have been copied to the functions of this library. A short explainer on what they mean:

• Thread Safety: Thread-safe code only manipulates shared data structures in a manner that ensures that all threads behave properly and fulfill their design specifications without unintended interaction.

• Realtime Safety: These functions can be called in a Realtime environment without blocking the thread. For example, an audio thread / callback.

Callback Handling

The callback functions / closures set with set_num_peers_callback, set_tempo_callback and setstartstop_callback` are handled by the underlying Link C++ library and may be run at any time. Data races and hidden mutations can occur if a closure has captured local variables and uses them at the same time as other code.

Testing

Ableton designed a Test Plan to test if your implementation of Ableton Link in your project meets all the expected requirements.

Implementation

• An instance of AblLink can be thought of as an Object with internal mutability. Kind of like a RefCell. Thread safety is guaranteed with internal Mutexes on the C++ side. Check the function and Link documentation for more.
• rustylink currently wraps around all functions available in 'abllink.h' and makes them publicly available, except for the destructors, which are implemented on the Drop trait.
• Function documentation has been copied almost 1:1 from 'abl_link.h' as it should still apply.
• The create functions for abllink and sessionstate have been renamed to new to make the API more Rust-intuitive.
• Functions have been implemented as methods on either the AblLink or the SessionState struct.
• Delete functions have been added to delete previously set num_peers, start_stop and tempo callbacks.

Known Issues

• The Example with sound has been implemented with cpal for cross-platform audio support. Compatibility depends on cpal and my possibly dodgy use of it. Help is appreciated. Especially with sample and host timings, since that stuff is tricky :)

Feedback

Pull requests and feedback in the github Discussions section is very welcome!

License

Ableton Link is dual licensed under GPLv2+ and a proprietary license.

This means that this wrapper is automatically under the GPLv2+ as well. See the included Licence file.

If you would like to incorporate Link into a proprietary software application, please contact Ableton at link-devs@ableton.com.

Credits

Thanks to Magnus Herold for his implementation. I made this library to learn about FFI in Rust and I started it as a fork of his.

Some code for splitting closures has been borrowed from ffihelpers with altered functionality. Thanks to Michael F Bryan for his work. Pull request to ffihelpers pending.

Links

For anyone interested, I also started making a multi-platform Ableton Link wrapper for Flutter, called f_link.