[gst-devel] Proposal for XML Description File for Plugins

[Benjamin Otte]

On Tue, 8 Feb 2005, Jeff Mitchell wrote:

> If others on the list can comment on the merits of binary extraction
> vs. an XML file, I'd appreciate it.  I'd like to see whether the
> prevailing opinion among developers is that a seperate file or binary
> extraction would make more sense.
>
Ok, let's start at the beginning. In the early days, there were status
tables like the one here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20010803152827/gstreamer.net/gstreamerstatus.html

Those were not really updated, so they were finally removed.
The first thing I'd do before reviving those status tables would be
figuring out why they weren't updated, because otherwise the reviving
won't last long.

My suspicion here is that it's more of a social than a technical
problem. The tables weren't updated because developers are lazy. They tend
to fix bugs, but not update status tables (or documentation, ask Stefan
about that ;)). So unless a way is found where developers think it's
necessary to update the status table, too, they'll simply forget about it.
Now there's 2 possibilities I know to get this:
1) create the status table without needing manual updates. (This is how
gst-inspect works.)
2) find missing updates automatically and make them break the build. (This
is how our documentation building works.)

Binary extraction would be step 1). A manually updated XML file (or
multiple manually updated XML files) would be the exact same problem as
before.

Benjamin