| WHAT IT IS |
| ---------- |
| This is GStreamer, a framework for streaming media. |
| |
| This package is in the 0.9.x series. This means that this is a |
| development series leading up to a stable 0.10.x series. |
| You have been warned. |
| |
| OVERVIEW |
| -------- |
| GStreamer is split up over a number of modules, tarballs and packages: |
| |
| - gstreamer: |
| The core. It contains the main library and header files, as well as |
| some fundamental elements. Every GStreamer project needs at least this |
| installed. |
| - gst-plugins-base: |
| A base set of plugins. This set is the set we actively keep synchronized |
| with the core and are also meant to serve as examples on how to write |
| GStreamer elements. It also contains a number of base classes for writing |
| GStreamer elements. |
| |
| 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), run |
| make install |
| - You should create a registry for things to work. |
| If you ran make install in the previous step, run |
| gst-register |
| as root. |
| |
| If you didn't install, run |
| tools/gst-register |
| as a normal user. |
| |
| - try out a simple test: |
| gst-launch fakesrc num_buffers=5 ! fakesink |
| (If you didn't install GStreamer, again prefix gst-launch with tools/) |
| |
| If it outputs a bunch of messages from fakesrc and fakesink, everything is |
| ok. |
| |
| - 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 using an application which |
| has a non-GPL compatible license (for instance a closed-source application) |
| with GStreamer, you have to make sure not to use 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. |
