There was some complaints not long ago on Planet GNOME about projects using Werror as default for their compile and the value/cost of it. I am currently using latest Fedora Development which comes with an updated GCC version. This is causing the GStreamer build to fail from CVS (and we haven’t gotten around to fixing all the issues yet), but it has actually also shown why having it is a good idea. Cause atm GStreamer is the only multimedia project I am able to compile at all (by turning off werror) using GCC 4.1. Xine, mplayer and VLC are all failing to build for me. So by fixing all these things for previous versions of GCC and other compilers made GStreamer compileable with this latest incarnation. My point is that unless werror is turned on by default nobody is going to bother fixing those warnings, which means that the code is less likely to be compileable as is with other compilers or future versions of your current compiler. Also since the GStreamer community has done this for a long while now, incrementally fixing outr build with new versions of GCC etc., the job of removing the warnings isn’t overwhelming. I think that for some GNOME modules (and most software in general) the job of making them warning free has at this point become so big that nobody can manage to build up the energy to even try.

vmware server

We are planning on supporting Solaris with our plugins. Thanks to Sun we now have a SPARC box in our office to build and test our plugins on for the SPARC platform. Also to have a Solaris Intel build available I looked into the recently announced free vmware server product. Struggled a little to get it going on my Fedora development system as the config problem had some problems finding/using the kernel headers, but a patch called vmware-any-any-update97 sorted me out. One thing I have to say about vmware is that is it a very nice product. When using it you get the feeling of using something very polished and the GUI feels (and is) something actually made for running on your linux system, not an afterthough or sidejob of a GUI meant for a windows system.

GStreamer and GTK on embedded systems

I mentioned earlier some of the things that happened at 3GSM in
regards to GStreamer and GTK+. By combining that information with our current engagements at Fluendo and the dealings we have had at Fluendo in wake of 3GSM I think we are now in a situation where almost every major chipmaker in the embedded sector plans to or is already offering a SDK for their boards and chips using GStreamer for the multimedia handling and GTK+ for the GUI. And what is maybe even more interesting is that these efforts have come about due to the customers of these companies asking not only for a ‘linux SDK’, but for an SDK including GStreamer and GTK+. I don’t know the exact reasons for why our mindshare suddenly have exploded, but apart from the endorsement of GNOME and GTK+ from the major distributions I think we owe a lot of this to Nokia and the Maemo environment. Currently I know of hardware products under development using GStreamer and GTK+ such as TV’s, PVR’s, Media Center solutions, set-top boxes, portable music players, web tablets and mobile phones. It will be a year or two before these products starts hitting the market, but the current development is nothing short of amazing. The chipmakers seems believe that for embedded market will be focus on two major stacks going forward, WinCE and the Linux/GStreamer/GTK+ combo. Pretty cool stuff in my book :)