SoC 2007 Project Mac OS X Framework

This project is part of Google Summer of Code 2007. Student: Pierre d'Herbemont Mentor: Felix Paul Kühne

If you wish to use the framework refer to the Mac OS X Framework wiki page

Introduction

I (Pierre d'Herbemont) will use this wiki page to detail the work I'll do for the GSoC 2007. My mentor for this project is Felix Kühne.

Project Objectives

More information in my original Proposal.

Status Summary

The simple test app that links to VLC.framework is able to play a given video just fine.

I have been re-working libvlc, so that the OS X framework can be a nice umbrella over it. A vlc application could be rewritten without the need of any other VLC interface than LibVLC.

I have implemented a master-detail-view interface a-la iTunes using Cocoa Bindings, and the framework. It may be a good candidate to replace current VLC.app but it still need a lot of work. Main advantages are code base is very light. It is easily modifiable. It makes uses of Bindings (with its pros and cons).

So far I didn't complete some of my objectives for the Google Summer of Code:

• Some functionality of the framework such as media transcoding, (config) preferences tuning, and vout filter are not implemented.
• The web plugin does not take

Timeline

Task Description	Due Date	Accomplished
My proposition has been accepted	N/A	Yes 12/04/2007
Work on setting up a git server to publish my work. See Git (thanks to Dionoea). More could be done to set up something better but that's enough for me for now ;)	15/04/2007	Yes 13/04/2007
Implement the stub framework and the sample code that links to it. See the commit on commit 1, commit 2.	15/04/2007	Yes 13/04/2007
First draft of the headers, plus partial implementation. Events, playlist, vout basic usage demo in the sample code. We do have some draft which cover vout/playlist and shows how events will be relayed. The sample code is less advanced than expected but that's fine, given the wanted simplicity. We do have, as a side effected, implemented VLCPlaylistDataSource which is an NSOutlineView data source, and is an efficient way to display the playlist from guest app.	29/04/2007	Yes 29/04/2007
Event structure in place in MediaControl.	no due date	Yes 29/04/2007
Auto evalutation, keeping in mind my original Proposal: Would current VLC be able to work with the object defined? Is there any simplification possible? What changes to libvlc are needed?.	29/04/2007	Yes
Make delegate callback (events) get called on main thread.	6/05/2007	Yes 03/05/2007
Implement my RFC on libvlc (v2). The RFC v2 is partly implemented. And the work is now on a RFC on libvlc playlist.	?	Yes 10/07/2007
Implement Meta data in VLCMedia.	?	Yes 10/07/2007
Implement my new RFC on libvlc playlist. media_list, media_list_player, media_library, media_discoverer are implemented.	?	Yes
First draft of Media Library object.	?	Yes
First draft of Dynamic playlist object. for now. We can use the bindings facility plus NSPredicate to imlement that.	?	No - dumped
First draft of transcoding objects.	?	No - not completed for SoC
First draft of picture effect objects.	?	No - not completed for SoC
First draft of preferences objects.	?	No - not completed for SoC
Have VLC/Mac OS X use the Framework.	?	No - VLC.app is implemented, this is a rewrite from scratch, but we still need to get some of the old code back.
Make VLC work without interface. (and remove VLC Cocoa hack from core)	?	Yes - already works without intervention.
End of the Google summer of code	N/A	20/08/2007
Merge the code in trunk, and preserve old VLC.app.	?	No

Todo reminder

• Rename VLCMovieView to VLCMediaView
• Use a 1 sec time frame for the DidChangePosition
• Make mediacontrol uses libvlc

Code repository

All the code I did for the GSoC is publicly stored on VideoLan's svn trunk (libvlc related changes) and VideoLan's Git Repository for GSoC on the pdherbemont_branch branch. To check it out:

$ git clone git://git.videolan.org/vlc-soc.git
$ cd vlc-soc

Now get my branch in a new local osx_framework branch:

$ git checkout -b osx_framework remotes/origin/pdherbemont_branch

And to keep sync-ed, tell git to use remote pdherbemont_branch for osx_framework.

$ git config branch.osx_framework.merge refs/heads/pdherbemont_branch

And tell git the remote repository is named origin.

$ git config branch.osx_framework.remote origin

Now a simple:

$ git pull

Should be enough to get synced.

Building the framework and the test app

• Build VLC as usual. see How to build VLC on Mac OS X.
• Build the framework

$ cd extra/MacOSX/Framework
$ make

• Now open extra/MacOSX/Framework/Examples/test/test.xcodeproject with Xcode
• hit command-R

Voilà!