[vlc-devel] [PATCH 1/4] vlm: remove schedule media type

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Le perjantaina 28. elokuuta 2020, 20.16.43 EEST Pierre Ynard via vlc-devel a 
écrit :
> > This is not removing VLM. VLM broadcasts are still unavoidable for
> > some fringe use cases like sout bridge.
> 
> Let's be clear where this is going. Just on Monday you were saying about
> multi-playlist support:

> > 2) LibVLC VLM was added, explicitly temporarily, because there was no
> > other way to expose VoD.
> > VoD is no longer there and the VLM API is
> > going away, presumably in 4.0 (because I can't see when else).

It is no news that the LibVLC VLM API is going away in 4.0. It was removed 2 
years ago, literally, although plans to do so go all the way back to LibVLC 
VLM VoD merge in 2008.

> The VLM can hold three types of objects. One of them - VoD media - was
> already removed earlier this year.
> This removes the second one.

Quoting the VLM documentation (doc/vlm.txt):

|    A media is composed with a list of inputs (the videos and audios you
|    want to stream), an output (where you want to stream them), and some
|    options.
|    There are two types of medias: vod and broadcast.

VoD is already removed, and broadcast are not removed by this patchset.

It's a little bit of an exageration to call VLM schedules an object type. They 
do not constitute a media type. And unlike the other two, they are not 
required for any VLC functionality that would otherwise be inaccessible.

> Personally I wouldn't be one to mourn the VLM very much, but still.
> Have there been deprecation notices in the code, visible by current
> users?
> Are alternatives available, or are they getting developed and
> implemented before removing what they replace?
> Have release notes been written, and documentation updated, to point current
> users towards these alternatives?

I leave it to who and when proposes to remove VLM (broadcast) to answer those 
questions. They do not belong in this review.

> And how does this fit in a potential greater VLM removal or evolution
> plan? If you want to put forward removal of the VLM as a counterproposal
> about the evolution of multiple-input management, that's a welcome
> opinion too.

What plan? You could already do multiple inputs in separate processes before 
VLM even existed. You can do multiple inputs in a single process, and different 
instance, or in the same instance, using LibVLC since last decade.
> 
> > It's patently obvious that some people do need/want scheduled VLC
> > usage. But it's also obvious that they don't use VLM schedules for
> > that.
> 
> Well we don't have telemetry of user behavior in VLC.

No we don't. But we have plenty of empirical evidence of people using or 
struggling to use the CLI or VLM broadcast - including to achieve what VLM 
schedules were supposed to enable (just search "cron" or "crontab" on f.v.o 
for a start).

So either schedules are so easy to use that nobody ever needs to ask questions 
about them, or nobody is even trying to use them. I somehow doubt the first 
possibility.

-- 
Rémi Denis-Courmont
http://www.remlab.net/