3.2. Using the Project Stamp
The first thing to do when making a new element is to specify some basic details about it: what its name is, who wrote it, what version number it is, etc. We also need to define an object to represent the element and to store the data the element needs. These details are collectively known as the boilerplate.
The standard way of defining the boilerplate is simply to write some code, and fill in some structures. As mentioned in the previous section, the easiest way to do this is to copy a template and add functionality according to your needs. To help you do so, there is a tool in the ./gst-plugins/tools/ directory. This tool, make_element, is a command line utility that creates the boilerplate code for you.
To use make_element, first open up a terminal window. Change to the gst-template/gst-plugin/src directory, and then run the make_element command. The arguments to the make_element are:
the name of the plugin, and
the source file that the tool will use. By default, gstplugin is used.
For example, the following commands create the MyFilter plugin based on the plugin template and put the output files in the gst-template/gst-plugin/src directory:
shell $ cd gst-template/gst-plugin/src
shell $ ../tools/make_element MyFilter
 | Capitalization is important for the name of the plugin. Keep in mind that under some operating systems, capitalization is also important when specifying directory and file names in general. |
The last command creates two files: gstexamplefilter.c and gstexamplefilter.h.
| It is recommended that you create a copy of the gst-plugin directory before continuing. |
Now one needs to adjust the Makefile.am to use the new filenames and run autogen.sh from the parent directory to bootstrap the build environment. After that, the project can be built and installed using the well known make && sudo make install commands.
|
Be aware that by default autogen.sh and
configure would choose /usr/local
as a default location. One would need to add
/usr/local/lib/gstreamer-0.10
to |