WHAT IT IS

----------

This is GStreamer, a framework for streaming media.

WHERE TO START

--------------

We have a website at

http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/

You should start by going through our FAQ at

http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/data/doc/gstreamer/head/faq/html/

There is more documentation; go to

http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/documentation

You can subscribe to our mailing lists; see the website for details.

We track bugs in GNOME's bugzilla; see the website for details.

You can join us on IRC - #gstreamer on irc.freenode.org

GStreamer 0.10 series

---------------------

Starring

  GSTREAMER

The core around which all other modules revolve.  Base functionality and

libraries, some essential elements, documentation, and testing.

  BASE

A well-groomed and well-maintained collection of GStreamer plug-ins and

elements, spanning the range of possible types of elements one would want

to write for GStreamer.  

And introducing, for the first time ever, on the development screen ...

  THE GOOD

 --- "Such ingratitude.  After all the times I've saved your life."

A collection of plug-ins you'd want to have right next to you on the

battlefield.  Shooting sharp and making no mistakes, these plug-ins have it

all: good looks, good code, and good licensing.  Documented and dressed up

in tests.  If you're looking for a role model to base your own plug-in on,

here it is.

If you find a plot hole or a badly lip-synced line of code in them,

let us know - it is a matter of honour for us to ensure Blondie doesn't look

like he's been walking 100 miles through the desert without water.

  THE UGLY

  --- "When you have to shoot, shoot.  Don't talk."

There are times when the world needs a color between black and white.

Quality code to match the good's, but two-timing, backstabbing and ready to

sell your freedom down the river.  These plug-ins might have a patent noose

around their neck, or a lock-up license, or any other problem that makes you

think twice about shipping them.

We don't call them ugly because we like them less.  Does a mother love her

son less because he's not as pretty as the other ones ? No  - she commends

him on his great personality.  These plug-ins are the life of the party.

And we'll still step in and set them straight if you report any unacceptable

behaviour - because there are two kinds of people in the world, my friend:

those with a rope around their neck and the people who do the cutting.

  THE BAD

  --- "That an accusation?"

No perfectly groomed moustache or any amount of fine clothing is going to

cover up the truth - these plug-ins are Bad with a capital B. 

They look fine on the outside, and might even appear to get the job done, but

at the end of the day they're a black sheep. Without a golden-haired angel

to watch over them, they'll probably land in an unmarked grave at the final

showdown.

Don't bug us about their quality - exercise your Free Software rights,

patch up the offender and send us the patch on the fastest steed you can

steal from the Confederates. Because you see, in this world, there's two

kinds of people, my friend: those with loaded guns and those who dig.

You dig.

The Lowdown

-----------

  --- "I've never seen so many plug-ins wasted so badly."

GStreamer Plug-ins has grown so big that it's hard to separate the wheat from

the chaff.  Also, distributors have brought up issues about the legal status

of some of the plug-ins we ship.  To remedy this, we've divided the previous

set of available plug-ins into four modules:

- gst-plugins-base: a small and fixed set of plug-ins, covering a wide range

  of possible types of elements; these are continuously kept up-to-date

  with any core changes during the development series.

  - We believe distributors can safely ship these plug-ins.

  - People writing elements should base their code on these elements.

  - These elements come with examples, documentation, and regression tests.

- gst-plugins-good: a set of plug-ins that we consider to have good quality

  code, correct functionality, our preferred license (LGPL for the plug-in

  code, LGPL or LGPL-compatible for the supporting library).

  - We believe distributors can safely ship these plug-ins.

  - People writing elements should base their code on these elements.

- gst-plugins-ugly: a set of plug-ins that have good quality and correct

  functionality, but distributing them might pose problems.  The license

  on either the plug-ins or the supporting libraries might not be how we'd

  like. The code might be widely known to present patent problems.

  - Distributors should check if they want/can ship these plug-ins.

  - People writing elements should base their code on these elements.

- gst-plugins-bad: a set of plug-ins that aren't up to par compared to the

  rest.  They might be close to being good quality, but they're missing

  something - be it a good code review, some documentation, a set of tests,

  a real live maintainer, or some actual wide use.

  If the blanks are filled in they might be upgraded to become part of

  either gst-plugins-good or gst-plugins-ugly, depending on the other factors.

  - If the plug-ins break, you can't complain - instead, you can fix the

    problem and send us a patch, or bribe someone into fixing them for you.

  - New contributors can start here for things to work on.

PLATFORMS

---------

- Linux is of course fully supported

- FreeBSD is reported to work; other BSD's should work too

- Solaris is reported to work; a specific sunaudiosink plugin has been written

- MacOSX is reported to work; specific audio and video sinks have been written

- Windows support is experimental but improving.  Output sinks have been

  written but are not yet included in the code. We support

  - MSys/MingW builds

  - Microsoft Visual Studio 6 builds (see win32/README.txt)

INSTALLING FROM PACKAGES

------------------------

You should always prefer installing from packages first.  GStreamer is

well-maintained for a number of distributions, including Fedora, Debian,

Ubuntu, Mandrake, Gentoo, ...

Only in cases where you:

- want to hack on GStreamer

- want to verify that a bug has been fixed

- do not have a sane distribution

should you choose to build from source tarballs or CVS.

Find more information about the various packages at

http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/download/

COMPILING FROM SOURCE TARBALLS

------------------------------

- again, make sure that you really need to install from source !

  If GStreamer is one of your first projects ever that you build from source,

  consider taking on an easier project.

- check output of ./configure --help to see if any options apply to you

- run

  ./configure

  make

  to build GStreamer.

- if you want to install it (not required, but what you usually want to do), run

  make install

- try out a simple test:

  gst-launch -v fakesrc num_buffers=5 ! fakesink

  (If you didn't install GStreamer, prefix gst-launch with tools/)

  If it outputs a bunch of messages from fakesrc and fakesink, everything is

  ok.

  If it did not work, keep in mind that you might need to adjust the

  PATH and/or LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variables to make the system

  find GStreamer in the prefix where you installed (by default that is /usr/local).

- After this, you're ready to install gst-plugins, which will provide the

  functionality you're probably looking for by now, so go on and read

  that README.

COMPILING FROM CVS

------------------

When building from CVS sources, you will need to run autogen.sh to generate 

the build system files.

You will need a set of additional tools typical for building from CVS,

including:

- autoconf

- automake

- libtool

autogen.sh will check for recent enough versions and complain if you don't have

them.  You can also specify specific versions of automake and autoconf with

--with-automake and --with-autoconf

Check autogen.sh options by running autogen.sh --help

autogen.sh can pass on arguments to configure - you just need to separate them

from autogen.sh with -- between the two.

prefix has been added to autogen.sh but will be passed on to configure because

some build scripts like that.

When you have done this once, you can use autoregen.sh to re-autogen with

the last passed options as a handy shortcut.  Use it.

After the autogen.sh stage, you can follow the directions listed in

"COMPILING FROM SOURCE"

You can also run your whole cvs stack uninstalled.  The script in

the gstreamer module /docs/faq/gst-uninstalled) is helpful in setting

up your environment for this.

PLUG-IN DEPENDENCIES AND LICENSES

---------------------------------

GStreamer is developed under the terms of the LGPL (see LICENSE file for

details). Some of our plug-ins however rely on libraries which are available

under other licenses. This means that if you are distributing an application

which has a non-GPL compatible license (for instance a closed-source

application) with GStreamer, you have to make sure not to distribute GPL-linked

plug-ins.

When using GPL-linked plug-ins, GStreamer is for all practical reasons

under the GPL itself.

HISTORY

-------

The fundamental design comes from the video pipeline at Oregon Graduate

Institute, as well as some ideas from DirectMedia.  It's based on plug-ins that

will provide the various codec and other functionality.  The interface

hopefully is generic enough for various companies (ahem, Apple) to release

binary codecs for Linux, until such time as they get a clue and release the

source.