3 This is GStreamer Ugly Plug-ins.
5 This package is in the 0.9.x series. This means that this is a
6 development series leading up to a stable 0.10.x series.
9 GStreamer 0.9 development series - Hung by a Thread
10 ---------------------------------------------------
16 The core around which all other modules revolve. Base functionality and
17 libraries, some essential elements, documentation, and testing.
21 A well-groomed and well-maintained collection of GStreamer plug-ins and
22 elements, spanning the range of possible types of elements one would want
23 to write for GStreamer.
25 And introducing, for the first time ever, on the development screen ...
29 --- "Such ingratitude. After all the times I've saved your life."
31 A collection of plug-ins you'd want to have right next to you on the
32 battlefield. Shooting sharp and making no mistakes, these plug-ins have it
33 all: good looks, good code, and good licensing. Documented and dressed up
34 in tests. If you're looking for a role model to base your own plug-in on,
37 If you find a plot hole or a badly lip-synced line of code in them,
38 let us know - it is a matter of honour for us to ensure Blondie doesn't look
39 like he's been walking 100 miles through the desert without water.
43 --- "When you have to shoot, shoot. Don't talk."
45 There are times when the world needs a color between black and white.
46 Quality code to match the good's, but two-timing, backstabbing and ready to
47 sell your freedom down the river. These plug-ins might have a patent noose
48 around their neck, or a lock-up license, or any other problem that makes you
49 think twice about shipping them.
51 We don't call them ugly because we like them less. Does a mother love her
52 son less because he's not as pretty as the other ones ? No - she commends
53 him on his great personality. These plug-ins are the life of the party.
54 And we'll still step in and set them straight if you report any unacceptable
55 behaviour - because there are two kinds of people in the world, my friend:
56 those with a rope around their neck and the people who do the cutting.
60 --- "That an accusation?"
62 No perfectly groomed moustache or any amount of fine clothing is going to
63 cover up the truth - these plug-ins are Bad with a capital B.
64 They look fine on the outside, and might even appear to get the job done, but
65 at the end of the day they're a black sheep. Without a golden-haired angel
66 to watch over them, they'll probably land in an unmarked grave at the final
69 Don't bug us about their quality - exercise your Free Software rights,
70 patch up the offender and send us the patch on the fastest steed you can
71 steal from the Confederates. Because you see, in this world, there's two
72 kinds of people, my friend: those with loaded guns and those who dig.
78 --- "I've never seen so many plug-ins wasted so badly."
80 GStreamer Plug-ins has grown so big that it's hard to separate the wheat from
81 the chaff. Also, distributors have brought up issues about the legal status
82 of some of the plug-ins we ship. To remedy this, we've divided the previous
83 set of available plug-ins into four modules:
85 - gst-plugins-base: a small and fixed set of plug-ins, covering a wide range
86 of possible types of elements; these are continuously kept up-to-date
87 with any core changes during the development series.
89 - We believe distributors can safely ship these plug-ins.
90 - People writing elements should base their code on these elements.
91 - These elements come with examples, documentation, and regression tests.
93 - gst-plugins-good: a set of plug-ins that we consider to have good quality
94 code, correct functionality, our preferred license (LGPL for the plug-in
95 code, LGPL or LGPL-compatible for the supporting library).
97 - We believe distributors can safely ship these plug-ins.
98 - People writing elements should base their code on these elements.
100 - gst-plugins-ugly: a set of plug-ins that have good quality and correct
101 functionality, but distributing them might pose problems. The license
102 on either the plug-ins or the supporting libraries might not be how we'd
103 like. The code might be widely known to present patent problems.
105 - Distributors should check if they want/can ship these plug-ins.
106 - People writing elements should base their code on these elements.
108 - gst-plugins-bad: a set of plug-ins that aren't up to par compared to the
109 rest. They might be close to being good quality, but they're missing
110 something - be it a good code review, some documentation, a set of tests,
111 a real live maintainer, or some actual wide use.
112 If the blanks are filled in they might be upgraded to become part of
113 either gst-plugins-good or gst-plugins-ugly, depending on the other factors.
115 - If the plug-ins break, you can't complain - instead, you can fix the
116 problem and send us a patch, or bribe someone into fixing them for you.
117 - New contributors can start here for things to work on.
119 INSTALLING FROM PACKAGES
120 ------------------------
121 You should always prefer installing from packages first. GStreamer is
122 well-maintained for a number of distributions, including Fedora, Debian,
123 Ubuntu, Mandrake, Gentoo, ...
125 Only in cases where you:
126 - want to hack on GStreamer
127 - want to verify that a bug has been fixed
128 - do not have a sane distribution
129 should you choose to build from source tarballs or CVS.
131 Find more information about the various packages at
132 http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/download/
134 COMPILING FROM SOURCE TARBALLS
135 ------------------------------
136 - again, make sure that you really need to install from source !
137 If GStreamer is one of your first projects ever that you build from source,
138 consider taking on an easier project.
140 - check output of ./configure --help to see if any options apply to you
146 - if you want to install it (not required), run
148 - You should create a registry for things to work.
149 If you ran make install in the previous step, run
153 If you didn't install, run
157 - try out a simple test:
158 gst-launch fakesrc num_buffers=5 ! fakesink
159 (If you didn't install GStreamer, again prefix gst-launch with tools/)
161 If it outputs a bunch of messages from fakesrc and fakesink, everything is
164 - After this, you're ready to install gst-plugins, which will provide the
165 functionality you're probably looking for by now, so go on and read
170 When building from CVS sources, you will need to run autogen.sh to generate
171 the build system files.
173 You will need a set of additional tools typical for building from CVS,
179 autogen.sh will check for recent enough versions and complain if you don't have
180 them. You can also specify specific versions of automake and autoconf with
181 --with-automake and --with-autoconf
183 Check autogen.sh options by running autogen.sh --help
185 autogen.sh can pass on arguments to configure - you just need to separate them
186 from autogen.sh with -- between the two.
187 prefix has been added to autogen.sh but will be passed on to configure because
188 some build scripts like that.
190 When you have done this once, you can use autoregen.sh to re-autogen with
191 the last passed options as a handy shortcut. Use it.
193 After the autogen.sh stage, you can follow the directions listed in
194 "COMPILING FROM SOURCE"
196 You can also run your whole cvs stack uninstalled. The script in
197 the gstreamer module /docs/faq/gst-uninstalled) is helpful in setting
198 up your environment for this.
200 PLUG-IN DEPENDENCIES AND LICENSES
201 ---------------------------------
202 GStreamer is developed under the terms of the LGPL (see LICENSE file for
203 details). Some of our plug-ins however rely on libraries which are available
204 under other licenses. This means that if you are using an application which
205 has a non-GPL compatible license (for instance a closed-source application)
206 with GStreamer, you have to make sure not to use GPL-linked plug-ins.
207 When using GPL-linked plug-ins, GStreamer is for all practical reasons
208 under the GPL itself.
212 The fundamental design comes from the video pipeline at Oregon Graduate
213 Institute, as well as some ideas from DirectMedia. It's based on plug-ins that
214 will provide the various codec and other functionality. The interface
215 hopefully is generic enough for various companies (ahem, Apple) to release
216 binary codecs for Linux, until such time as they get a clue and release the