[mythtv] Plugin developing howto

Robert Johnston anaerin at gmail.com
Fri May 5 02:35:34 UTC 2006


On 5/4/06, florin baiduc <florinbaiduc at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> some time ago I saw on the mythtv's page a howto about how to develop
> plugins. It explained the usage of the config, init, run functions,
> and other things...
> Can somebody show me the link to that article (I really searched it,
> but I can't find it anymore)...
> I was to change a plugin's interface for to allow proper
> "multitasking" - meaning that I should be able to exit a plugin
> (mythmusic for example) and still have it working and accessible in
> the background. For ther moment I can have the mythmusic running in
> the background and so something which doesn't require /dev/dsp access,
> but not much more.

Essentially, you have to seperate the Plugin and the actual code that
does the work, then run the worker thread as a seperate process you
can talk to from the plugin (Via. TCP/IP, for example). This is how
MTD, MFD/MFE and (Now) MythArchive work. There is no way (That I am
aware of) to spin off a seperate thread from a plugin, as the plugin
is essentially loaded modally (That is, it blocks the Frontend 'til it
quits).

> Another question would be "How to refres the non-top layer toghether
> with the top layer?"

That'd be an exercise left to the programmer. ;) Most plugins that
seperate like this use a TCP socket to control the worker process from
the plugin.
--
Robert "Anaerin" Johnston


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