Choosing a Phonon backend

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Saturday 29 March 2008, Tanguy Krotoff wrote:
> If I want to experiment features from the backend I cannot do it
> officially, only through unreadable code that will this time for sure
> really break.

i think you can already do this, just as DragonPlayer did with xine.

the best answer, however, is to ensure that this support gets into phonon 
itself. otherwise we will indeed end up with lots of 
only-accessible-via-a-specific-backend features that don't get pushed "up" 
into Phonon's API (that's just human nature.. path of least resistance, 
wanting to hold onto their own "special feature", etc).

the question is how to do this in a practical sense: if your app requires a 
feature that isn't available in the Phonon currently released, and you add 
API to Phonon to address this, only people with the new Phonon can use it. 
that's probably the real issue here, no?

so ... Phonon is going to be release ever ~6 months or so with KDE. perhaps it 
makes sense in the "Phonon maturing" phase of Phonon's lifespan for apps that 
push the edges of Phonon try to sync up with that 6 month release cycle? in 
between, you could even ship your own version of Phonon with the added API 
perhaps? that would be a bit more tricky (have to bre careful about 
compatibility with the installed version and what not) but is probably 
doable?

if people put their thinking hats on, i'm sure it's possible to come up with 
workable solutions that don't put Phonon's API future in jeopardy (which 
exposing the backends certainly would)

> And what about a Phonon::setPreferedBackendName() if my app need it as
> I expose before?

from what i understand, you can set the backend in a config file, so that's 
how you can do that. no need to touch code, just modify the config file 
before running your app.

for a very elaborate set up, you could even add to $KDEDIRS a testing dir and 
put just that one file with that one entry in $DIR/share/config/. running 
your app with that $KDEDIRS would give you your experimental backend.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
humru othro a kohnu se
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

KDE core developer sponsored by Trolltech
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