Stoatworks Burrow
One list for every plugin, tool and module
What it does
The Stoatworks software is spread across nearly a hundred repositories: video plugins in two or three formats each, audio plugins as VST3 and Audio Units, applications, and modules for Bitfocus Companion. Installing one by hand means finding its project page, working out which of six archives you want, unzipping it and putting it in a folder that moves depending on the format and the platform. Keeping them up to date means somehow noticing that a release happened.
Burrow puts all of it in one searchable list under six tabs: Video plugins, Video tools, Audio, Networking & Infrastructure, Self-hosted, and Device firmware (still to come). It reads the folders your hosts actually load from, tells you what's current, what has an update and what you've never installed, and then does the work. If a tool has a Companion module, it's offered on the tool's own row, because that's the only place anyone would think to look for it.
It only asks for an administrator password when a batch actually needs one, which is two of the seven formats: OpenFX and After Effects plugins live in system folders, and those applications don't look anywhere else. Audio plugins, applications and Companion modules never need one. If the shared Applications folder isn't yours to write to, an application goes in your own ~/Applications rather than asking for root. Everything that doesn't need a password happens first, so cancelling at the prompt still leaves the rest installed.
Every plugin's browser demo is built into the app, so you can try an effect before you install it, even with no internet.
You don't have to use it. Every plugin is still a normal download from its own release page, and always will be.
- Everything in one searchable list under six tabs — Video plugins, Video tools, Audio, Networking & Infrastructure, Self-hosted and Device firmware to come — grouped into up to date, update available and not installed
- Per-format state on every row — a plugin can be current in Resolume and missing in Resolve, and the row says so
- Bitfocus Companion modules on the row of the tool they drive, installed into the developer modules folder Companion reads
- Applications installed from their disk image, into your Applications folder or your own one — never with a password
- Choose which formats to install by default, and override it for any single plugin
- One administrator prompt per batch, never one per plugin
- Release notes for every update, labelled honestly when a release carried no written notes
- Each plugin's browser demo built in, running offline from a local address
- Removes exactly what it installed and nothing else — other people's plugins in the same folder are invisible to it
- Works with no internet connection, and says plainly when the version numbers it is showing came from the copy that shipped with the app
- No account, no sign-in, no telemetry
- Claim software you installed yourself — matched by the bundle identifier inside it, never the filename — so it reports a version and takes updates; releasing hands it back untouched
Screenshots
Where it stands
Beta at v0.3.1, where a plugin whose version can't be read is listed as Version unknown, with a Reinstall button, instead of Up to date. The catalogue, the install and uninstall paths, the archive guards and the privileged helper's refusals have been run against real release archives on macOS. Nothing has been installed into a live host through the finished app yet: the folder work is tested against temporary directories, and the real Extra Effects folder is only ever read. The Windows privileged helper isn't written yet.
Watch it running
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