[gst-devel] Offtopic bits of the split proposal

[Erik Walthinsen]

An attempt to reply to the relatively off-topic bits of the plugin-split
thread first:

=====
taaz:
> A GST_PLUGIN_PATH would be nice.

Yes, it would.  I thought someone did that, but it seems not.  Very easy
to do though, just prepend it to the search path, maybe share code with
the --gst-plugin-path= argument, though I think that's comma delimited.
Perhaps change that to colon-delimited so it shared with the env-var?

> You could do something like have default paths which are used if
> GST_PLUGIN_PATH is not set.  If it is set then defeaults are ignored.
> Like PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH behavior.  Have a tool that can print
> defaults so users could do:
>
> export GST_PLUGIN_PATH=\
>   `gstreamer-config --default-plugin-path`:~/my-gst-plugins/

PATH is absolute, there is nothing else, but LD_LIBRARY_PATH is just an
auxilliary list prepended to the main search path, which is handled by
ld.so[.conf].  GST_PLUGIN_PATH would operate similarly, such that if you
want to override a plugin, you make sure your override is in the plugin.
There's no need to have to extract the original path first.

There might be some benefit in being able to kill the default path, but
I'd be more tempted to do this with a GST_PLUGIN_PATH hack, say leaving a
trailing : on or even :! on the end of the path.

======
wingo:
> what plugin depends on what other plugin? I don't get it. and if it is
> the case that no plugin depends on any other (where 'plugin' == .so, not
> the individual sinks/sources), why would this be difficult?

> do these exist?

Plugins that depend on others would include a single-piece MPEG2 decoder,
for instance.  The autoplugger uses the same technique, though it doesn't
dpeend on any specific elements except autoplugcache.  It descends from
GstBin, and places elements into itself on its own.  Static ones could be
XML files with pipeline fragments.

      Erik Walthinsen <omega at temple-baptist.com> - System Administrator
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