[mythtv] OSX backend obstacles?

[Isaac Richards]

On Sunday 11 December 2005 14:54, Robert Johnston wrote:
> On 12/11/05, Daniel Kristjansson <danielk at cuymedia.net> wrote:
> > On Sun, 2005-12-11 at 17:02 +0000, Dave Abrahams wrote:
> > > Which appears to be entirely concerned with getting video
> > > off of capture hardware /cards/.  Since my DCT-6200
> > > communicates over FireWire, I'm wondering if that ought to
> > > be a non-issue?
> >
> > Not quite a non-issue, but a surmountable one. Right now we use
> > the Linux firewire libraries. OSX probably has similar libraries
> > but MythTV would have to be adapted to use them, either with an
> > adaptation layer in MythTV or an external library that emulates
> > the Linux firewire libraries with calls to the OSX firewire
> > libraries. There are recorders like the DBOX2 that should already
> > work on OSX.
>
> Would it be possible to "Modularize" the Myth calls for recorders, so
> you have an IVTV Module, a Firewire Module, a DVB Module and so on?
> This would make it pretty easy to make a "Linux Firewire Module" and
> an "OSX Firewire Module" (And, say, a "Solaris Firewire Module" or
> whatever else people want to do) and to dynamically link them in at
> runtime (So if you get a Firewire HD box, you don't need to completely
> recompile Myth to use it, just compile the Required Firewire module,
> drop it in, and restart MythBackend).

Really, the recorder code's already modular enough.  Common functionality in a 
few base classes, with a bunch of hardware specific children.  Minor amounts 
of recorder specific code in the main TVRec class to drive it all.  I see no 
point in making tiny little separately loadable modules - it just increases 
overhead and potential problems (we already get enough "bug" reports when 
something changes in mythtv and people don't update mythplugins to match) for 
very little gain.

As for 'completely recompiling' after enabling or disabling a single recorder 
module, that's what ccache is for. =)  It'd really only involve the full 
recompilation of 3 or 4 total files, and relinking libmythtv.

Isaac