[vlc-devel] GSoC 2026 — Cloud Storage Integration for VLC | Soham Kute

[Soham Kute]

Hi Pierre and the VideoLAN team,

My name is Soham Kute and I'm writing to express my interest in the
'Cloud Integration for Desktop' GSoC 2026 project.

I've been actively working on the project and wanted to share concrete
progress before submitting my formal proposal on the GSoC platform.

Here's what I've done so far:

1. Built VLC 4.0 from source on Linux Mint (Ubuntu base), resolving
dependency issues along the way.

2. Cloned and revived libcloudstorage — hit a real build failure
caused by a libmicrohttpd ABI change in newer versions (callback
return type changed from int to MHD_Result). Patched
MicroHttpdServer.cpp and got the library building and installed
successfully.

3. Written a VLC 4.0 access module (cloudstorage.cpp) registering
gdrive://, dropbox://, and onedrive:// as shortcuts using
vlc_module_begin/end.

4. Resolved VLC 4.0 plugin ABI requirements — the suffixed entry point
naming convention (vlc_entry__cloudstorage), MODULE_STRING definition,
and C++20 coroutines flag required by libcloudstorage headers.

5. Plugin is confirmed working — `vlc --list` shows "cloudstorage —
Cloud Storage Access" and invoking gdrive://test.mp4 correctly
triggers Open() and Read() on the module.

6. Written 5 GTest test cases, all passing — covering plugin loading
via dlopen, entry point symbol verification, file size sanity,
provider name routing (gdrive→google, dropbox→dropbox,
onedrive→onedrive), and factory creation.

The module skeleton correctly handles Open, Close, Read and Control.
The next steps I'm planning for the implementation:
- OAuth token flow per provider with browser redirect and token persistence
- File listing and browsing as a VLC media source tree
- Streaming file chunks into VLC's read buffer using libcloudstorage's
async download API

I'd love guidance from Pierre on the recommended OAuth redirect
handling approach for VLC 4.0, and whether ICloudFactory is still the
preferred entry point or if there's a newer pattern I should follow.

Looking forward to your feedback. I'll be submitting my formal proposal shortly.

Best regards,
Soham Kute