docs/manual/appendix-compiling.xml

<chapter id="chapter-compiling">
  <title>Compiling</title>
  <para>
    This section talks about the different things you can do when building
    and shipping your applications and plugins.
  </para>

  <sect1 id="section-compiling-embedding">
    <title>Embedding static elements in your application</title>
    <para>
      The <ulink type="http"
      url="http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/data/doc/gstreamer/head/pwg/html/index.html">Plugin
      Writer's Guide</ulink> describes in great detail how to write elements
      for the &GStreamer; framework. In this section, we will solely discuss
      how to embed such elements statically in your application. This can be
      useful for application-specific elements that have no use elsewhere in
      &GStreamer;.
    </para>
    <para>
      Dynamically loaded plugins contain a structure that's defined using
      <function>GST_PLUGIN_DEFINE ()</function>. This structure is loaded
      when the plugin is loaded by the &GStreamer; core. The structure
      contains an initialization function (usually called
      <function>plugin_init</function>) that will be called right after that.
      It's purpose is to register the elements provided by the plugin with
      the &GStreamer; framework. 
      If you want to embed elements directly in
      your application, the only thing you need to do is to replace
	  <function>GST_PLUGIN_DEFINE ()</function> with a call to
          <function>gst_plugin_register_static ()</function>. As soon as you
      call <function>gst_plugin_register_static ()</function>, the elements
      will from then on be available like any other element, without them
      having to be dynamically loadable libraries. In the example below, you
      would be able to call <function>gst_element_factory_make
      ("my-element-name", "some-name")</function> to create an instance of the
      element.
    </para>

    <programlisting>
<![CDATA[
/*
 * Here, you would write the actual plugin code.
 */

[..]

static gboolean
register_elements (GstPlugin *plugin)
{
  return gst_element_register (plugin, "my-element-name",
			       GST_RANK_NONE, MY_PLUGIN_TYPE);
}

static
my_code_init (void)
{
  ...

  gst_plugin_register_static (
    GST_VERSION_MAJOR,
    GST_VERSION_MINOR,
    "my-private-plugins",
    "Private elements of my application",
    register_elements,
    VERSION,
    "LGPL",
    "my-application-source",
    "my-application",
    "http://www.my-application.net/")

  ...
}
]]>
    </programlisting>
  </sect1>
</chapter>