This is a JUCE based plug-in that loads and wraps a single VST, VST3, or AU plug-in (in this case an instrument plug-in, which requires MIDI in and stereo audio-out), based on this code example provided by Fabian Renn-Giles in the JUCE forum.

It serves as a simple starting point for experiments with the JUCE hosting code.

You will need your own copy of the JUCE Framework to work with this code. This code was developed using JUCE version 6.0.7.

One tricky aspect of building a JUCE-based host program is the need to create a "known plug-ins list" (class juce::KnownPluginList), and register various plug-ins into it. This code skirts that obstacle by "borrowing" the known plug-ins list managed by the JUCE AudioPluginHost example program. You will need to compile and run that one, and register at least one of your plug-ins (I used u-he's Hive 2 in VST3 format).

If you run this program in a debugger, and set up to load a VST3 plug-in, it will most likely stop at a jassert line and report a couple of memory leaks. You can just continue execution until it shuts down normally. This appears to be a JUCE issue, which I don't have time to track down at the moment.