“BTW, how to pack those resources into the built .vst3 file so that I needn’t copy the folder?“
You can pack the resources (PNG files) into the XML file by altering the uidesc file via the WYSIWYG editor to embed the PNG data inside the XML file, then edit the project’s CMakeLists.txt file to remove the resource dependencies of those PNG files.
But (IMO) there isn’t a good reason to circumvent the Steinberg engineers’ bundle-folder approach. While the resulting plugin will be somewhat more “self contained” it won’t be any smaller in size since it absorbs the PNG data. Plus, all the VST3 hosts should find the .vst3 plugin in the bundle without problems. In addition, this is how the MacOS version of VSTs (and AU and AAX) plugins work, as well as WinOS AAX too.
And, I am guessing that they changed the paradigm to use the bundle-folder for good reasons, including stuff that hasn’t been specified or announced yet. So, I would recommend just going with the flow and use the whole bundle folder. Just my opinion.
- Will