[gst-devel] library functions not returning

[in7y118 at public.uni-hamburg.de]

Quoting Thomas Vander Stichele <thomas at apestaart.org>:

> The only other way I can think of to solve the actual issues caused by
> this behaviour would be "as soon as we find such an error in any of the
> libraries we use, we disable that plugin from the build."
> 
The behaviour other programs tend to use (including those using GStreamer) is 
to fix the bug upstream and from then on require the fixed version.
And if that's not possible either ship a broken plugin if it's a minor problem 
or stop distributing the plugin. 

> I don't think it makes much sense to discuss theoretical cleanliness of
> designs in this case.  It makes more sense to say "So it seems the gdk
> pixbuf loaders can trigger an endless loop when we typefind a gzipped
> file.  How do we make sure typefinding doesn't block all of GStreamer ?"
> 
> Especially if this is an issue any library can throw at us, it makes
> sense to me to have mechanisms to guard against it.
> 
If you start going that route, be aware that everybody is allowed to add 
plugins to GStreamer. And some of our own plugins wrap plugin systems where 
everybody is allowed to install new plugins, too. (gdk-pixbuf, LADSPA, gnome-
vfs, maybe xine or KIOSlaves in the future)
Which means you need to essentially guard anything against this if you want to 
be really sure nothing breaks.


On another unrelated note: Shouldn't we - when we already go this way - not 
also properly guard against SEGV or SIGILL, too?
Libraries have all sorts of problems, not jsut infinte loops...


Benjamin