[gst-devel] An idea re: libraries

[omega at cse.ogi.edu]

(I'm sending this via `telnet localhost 25`, pine is not cooperating)

I've been thinking about the issue of library re-use.  I just downloaded
id3lib, and am building it in hopes that it's got a usable cmdline tool so
I can try to use id3v2 tags to do useful things like put more than 32 or
so characters in the fields.  Ripping my sister's classical music
collection tends to seriously stress id3...

Anyway, the idea was to generate some sane way of utilizing lazy binding
for plugins.  Say the mpg123 decoder can read id3 tags natively, but needs
id3lib to decode more complex stuff.  Theoretically you can go ahead and
use the API provided, but you have to wrap it such that the id3lib-based
code is never called unless it has been verified 100% that id3lib is
available.  If you aren't careful enough, you could fault, though.

The problem with this is that you can't build something unless you have
the header file.  That means that this will only work for binary
distributions built when absolutely every library is available at build
time, but may not be around at run time on the user's machine.

Anyway, I'll probably play around with the idea eventually, but I just
thought I'd throw it out on the list in case anyone either has a better 
idea or just wants to thwack me for being stupid (I probably ignored
something rather fundamental...).


FYI, my ISP's backbone provider has been spineless for the last 2 days
(Failed at 2:45am on Wed, Dec 13.  It's now 12:25am Fri, Dec 15.).  This
has caused me to be rather in-communicado, since I can get a couple
minutes of packets through every half an hour, or worse.  First thing
tomorrow I'll be attempting to set up a dialup line as backup, so I can at
least stick around on IRC and do CVS and stuff.  Email works, but in
bursts.  I'm sending from this account because it's on the same ISP, so I
can always talk to it.  Mail bursts whenever the network is up. 

For reference: yes, I'm twitching.


- Omega
omega at cse.ogi.edu