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Chino is presented, a framework for creating meta-applications from Linux audio and Midi tools. It provides command line options to create or open sessions, a runtime user interface for adding, restarting or removing applications and a hand-editable file format to which sessions are saved. Graphviz is used to optionally display the layout of a session.
Chino itself is a Bash script that just provides generic functionality, users can create presets to implement what is desired for their use cases. Presets are prototypes for sessions, multiple sessions can be derived from a preset.
A preset is made up of a number of applications, each defined as a program together with its usage. For every application, the preset contains required application files and a library file that, via variables and functions, defines how the program is to be started and interconnected. Defining applications together with their connections results in dependencies, which are tied via user defined port-groups. In this paper, we will explain the architecture of Chino and take a look at some implications and limitations of this session management model.