[vlc-devel] [PATCH 0/4] Add multi-playlist support

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

On Wed, 16 Sep 2020, at 01:21, Rémi Denis-Courmont wrote:
> Le keskiviikkona 16. syyskuuta 2020, 0.07.15 EEST Jean-Baptiste Kempf a écrit 
> :
> > On Tue, 15 Sep 2020, at 23:02, Rémi Denis-Courmont wrote:
> > > But second and more importantly, you can already do any and all of those
> > > multiple instnaces with the existing API. You can spawn multiple LibVLC
> > > instances, or multiple playlists in an instance or multiple player in an
> > > instance, both via LibVLC APIs or with the existing core/plugin APIs.
> > 
> > But people don't do that.
> 
> People don't use APIs. Lets add more APIs for them to use.
> Surely that's going to fix the problem...
> 
> Come on, don't be ridiculous.

Qt and macOS require this API. This is for US, not for 3rd party people.

> > People use the VLC product and run VLC product,
> > because they download vlc.exe/dmg. And VLC UIs don't use libVLC, they use
> > the core,
> 
> Of course, that's why I did point out, in the very quote right above, that 
> "[y]ou can spawn (...) multiple playlists in an instance or multiple player in 
> an instance, (...) via (...) the existing core/plugin APIs" that the GUIs can 
> already use.

You can spawn, yes, but you cannot list them, which is exactly what those patches are about.

> > and therefore one cannot "spawn multiple libVLC".
> 
> They *do* not spawn them but they still *can* spawn them. Indeed, nothing 
> prevents VLC from spawning LibVLC instances within a helper process that would 
> either be vlc.exe or a new ad-hoc executable. In fact, that is the only way 

This is not the current design, of the interfaces.
And adding a new executable is very hard to do, on some of our desktop platforms.

-- 
Jean-Baptiste Kempf -  President
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