[gst-devel] new API for applications to check plugin requirements

[Stefan Kost]

Hi Tim,

Tim Müller wrote:
> Howdy,
> 
> I'd like to add the following four functions to the 0.9 API to make it
> easier for applications to check plugin requirements at runtime/on
> startup:
> 
<snip>
> 
> The two _get_foo_version() functions are probably pretty much
> self-explanatory.
> 
> The _check_foo_requirements() function should be passed an array of
> GstPluginRequirements to check. If all requirements are fulfilled, these
> functions will return TRUE. Otherwise they will return FALSE and
> *outdated and *unavailable will be filled with arrays of the given
> GstPluginRequirements that don't fulfil the requirements. This way
> applications can easily construct dialogs with messages like "These
> plugins are outdated: xyz  These plugins are not installed: abc"
> 
> Thoughts?
> Should the out parameters rather be GLists?
> 
> If there are no objections, I'll commit this to gstregistry.[ch]
> tomorrow (along with docs of course).

I see the need to check if plugins are available and probably if they are recent 
enough. But from the users perspective getting such an error dialog wont be very 
useful. The user wont know what to do to fix the problem.

IMHO the app need to make sure at build time that the required plugins are 
available. Can you elaborate why that wont suite your needs?

Stefan