gnash: init at 0.8.11-2017-03-08 [WIP]

[rnhmjoj]

Motivation for this change

We lack a free flash player and a standalone one.

Things done

• Tested using sandboxing
• Built on platform(s)
  • NixOS
  • macOS
  • Linux
• Tested compilation of all pkgs that depend on this change (none)
• Tested execution of all binary files
• Fits CONTRIBUTING.md.

Things to do

• enable hardware acceleration
• build the browser plugin (firefox)
• fix audio with Gstreamer
• test Qt toolkit

Notes

With the Gstreamer backend I could not hear any audio (mp3 source).

About the browser, this plugin is based on XULrunner which, if I understand correctly, is being phased out so I'm not sure whether it still work with recent firefox versions.

[rnhmjoj]

Building the plugin requires a header file npupp.h which is missing from the npapi_sdk package. It's probably a lost cause.

[rnhmjoj]

The mp3 decoder is in gst-plugins-ugly but gnash doesn't seem to pick it up:

[3868:1] 23499 ERROR: Could not start event sound: MediaHandlerGst::createAudioDecoder: Couldn't find a plugin for audio type audio/mpeg! -- MediaHandler::createFlashAudioDecoder: no available flash decoders for codec 2 (MP3)
[3868:1] 23581 ERROR: Missing plugin, but plugin installing not supported. Will try anyway, but expect failure.
[3868:1] 23581 ERROR: gst_install_plugins_async failed. Please report.

[joachifm]

IIRC we dropped gnash a while back. I've been unable to find solid info on what its status is these days, do you happen to know? (I notice the commit date here is fairly recent)

[rnhmjoj]

Same for me: there has not been a release in years but the development has not stopped. The latest release does not build due to various API changes in libraries but the git source does and some people are still using it (I mostly used the AUR pkgbuild as a reference).

The browser plugin is certainly doomed but it's still useful as a standalone player. The only alternative I could think of is running adobe flashplayer in wine.

[joachifm]

The only alternative I could think of is running adobe flashplayer in wine.

Heh, that's a pretty good justification for adding gnash back. Is this ready to integrate?

[rnhmjoj]

It's pretty good. The mp3 codec not working it's probably a issue within gstreamer itself and it's not critical as ffmpeg works fine. I would like the openGL renderer tested by someone else: it causes heavy artifacts and it's completely unusable so I disabled it but maybe it's a problem limited to my driver.