Herostratus’ legacy

words from a lazy coder

GStreamer VA-API under the umbrella of GStreamer

We have a new GStreamer VA-API release: 1.6.0!Wait a minute, you might say, weren’t the last release 0.7?, and you will be correct; but something big has happened: GStreamer VA-API is now part of the official GStreamer project!

And this means a couple changes.

First of all, the official repository of the project has been moved, now it’s co-hosted along with the rest of the GStreamer components, in freedesktop.org (fdo):

Anonymous Git repository: git://anongit.freedesktop.org/gstreamer/gstreamer-vaapi

Developer Git repository: ssh://username@git.freedesktop.org/git/gstreamer/gstreamer-vaapi

Web Git gateway: https://cgit.freedesktop.org/gstreamer/gstreamer-vaapi

Second, the bug tracking has also moved, since now GStreamer VA-API is now a component of GStreamer, the new bugs must be filled here:

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=GStreamer&component=gstreamer-vaapi

And the bug list is here:

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/buglist.cgi?component=gstreamer-vaapi&product=GStreamer

What will happen with the old bugs? you will ask. Well, we will move them as soon as we have reviewed all them.

The third change, as you already noticed, is the version scheme. Now we are following the GStreamer version numbering to avoid confusion and to simplify our development. Hence, this release, 1.6.0, supports the current GStreamer stable version (1.6.3), and our current development branch is the 1.7.x. The future releases will follow the GStreamer version schemes and dependencies.

Sweet! but, what’s new in this release?. The answer is, not much. Really. Most of the changes are related with the coupling with the upstream processes (autoconf setup, documentation, etc.). Perhaps the most remarkable thing is the removal of the support libraries (libgstvaapi-*.so) used by the vaapi plugin: now they are compiled as one static library and linked to the GStreamer’s plugin. Also, the custom parsers were removed, and the plugin and elements documentation got better shape.

At code level, we had to push a huge indentation commit, in order to align with the GStreamer code style. This commit artificially kills the blame history, but it was our better option.

I ought to say that those were not the only changes at code level, Michael Olbrich fixed a missing frame release in the Wayland backend. And Sree, as usual, fixed a bunch of hardcore stuff. But specially I want to thank Tim-Philipp Müller, for helping us along the upstreaming process. And obviously to the Intel Open Source Technology Center, for let this happen.

Here’s the git’s short log summary since the last 0.7.0 release:

1 Joel Holdsworth
1 Michael Olbrich
9 Sreerenj Balachandran
4 Tim-Philipp Müller
42 Víctor Manuel Jáquez Leal

By the way, Igalia is hiring!