Faust Integration in HISE

The proposed GSoC project aims at integrating support for the Faust audio programming language into HISE, an extensive framework for the creation of sample-based virtual musical instruments. There are multiple ways to accomplish the integration, ahead-of-time compilation and just-in-time compilation, each with their specific benefits and shortcomings. The most straight-forward method involves ahead-of-time compilation of the Faust code into a dynamic library which the HISE instrument can interface with. This works well for finished products which will be exported and compiled once, but run many times. During prototyping, however, build time is essential and relinking the complete instrument would be excessive. In that case machine code will be generated just-in-time (JIT) from the Faust source code whenever it is modified without recompiling or linking the rest of the instrument. Faust already provides the necessary mechanisms for just-in-time compilation via LLVM, which will be tied to suitable data structures inside HISE. Lastly HISE also provides an integrated development environment (IDE) with a syntax-highlighting text editor to the instrument developer. Programming the instruments in Faust should be an on-par experience to the developer when comparing to other supported languages, e.g., SNEX and JavaScript. Therefore the existing development environment will be extended to support the Faust language, while allowing the developer to still use their editors and tools outside of HISE.