I’d really like to package my own renoise libraries and have them show up in Renoise the way other libraries show up. I’ve tried to make one by modifying an existing library (changing the manifest file, renaming the folder), but haven’t had any luck.
First of all, I’d like to ask if this is really what you want?
The user library can do everything that bundled libraries can do, and they are not ‘read only’.
Just save a preset (instrument or otherwise) from anywhere, and it will be available.
Still, if you are looking to get betterorganized withyour content (I don’t know,maybe you have a lot of instruments), then this little guide might be useful:
–
XRNL Library Building HOWTO
By far, the easiest way to build up a library is to save presets from inside Renoise.
So that’s what I am going to show - how to create a library based on an existing user library…
1. Build the collection
Libraries are laid out in the same way as the user library.
For example, it might have the following structure:
- Samples
- Multi-Samples
- Instruments
Note that these folders are created automatically, as you save a preset.
Inside these folders, you can organize presets in folders too. This is supported and shown in the Renoise/Redux interface, but you can’t reorganize, move files around from there - you need to open an explorer/finder window to organize your files. Any changes performed here should automatically be reflected in the Renoise user interface.
So, after a bit of customization your file structure might now look like this (with folders expanded)
- Samples
- Ambience
- Channel
- Field Recordings
+ Multi-Samples
+ Instruments
- Synth
- Bass
+ FX
- Scifi
2. Add a manifest
Once you feel the content is ready to be exported, add a manifest to the root folder
(use a basic text editor such as Notepad+ or similar, and copy the following text as a starting point)
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<RenoiseContentLibrary doc_version="0">
<Id>org.username.examplepack</Id>
<Name>Example Pack</Name>
<Author>Username (plus email, link, whatever)</Author>
<Version>1.0</Version>
<Description>Amazing pack by username for Renoise+Redux</Description>
</RenoiseContentLibrary>
The only thing that is really important to get right is the name - it needs to follow a certain naming convention, in the form ‘abc.def.ghi’.
For example e.g. ‘com.renoise.elements’ for one of our Renoise-published libraries, but you can use whatever name you like as long as it has those three parts.
By now, the file structure might look like this:
+ Samples
+ Multi-Samples
+ Instruments
manifest.xml
You can even add additional files if you wish to - perhaps you have a PDF document, or a ‘readme’ of some kind?
These files will not be useful to Renoise, but will still be installed on the user harddrive as part of the library.
3. Creating the library file
Third and final step: creating the library file itself.
Using a zip archive utility (on windows, 7zip is recommended), you first compress the _inside_of the root folder, and then assign it the name provided in the manifest_plus_the Renoise library file extension, “xrnl”.
So, the file name of our example pack would becomeorg.username.examplepack.xrnl
4. Test install
If you want, you can now install the library to check that everything has worked.
- To install in Renoise, drag the file on top of the Renoise window.
- To install in Redux, drag the file on top of the plugin window, or click the load button
A successful install should result in a message such as “Library ‘xxx’ was successfully installed. It contains Instrument presets.”
If the installer encountered a problem, hopefully you will get a useful error message that can help to track down the problem.
It absolutely is what I wanted to do, thanks! I always wanted to release some of my own sounds as a library for others. Since nobody likes to download 200 individual sounds, releasing a library is always a nice way to go about things 
Also, is this the first time this HOWTO is being made available? I’m rather surprised it was held back for so long.
Cool, great initiative! I’ve just added libraries to the downloads server -
now we just need to raise the allowed size per file. 64megs is not much for a library…