I have created a gstreamer plugin with an element inside that would generate some data when put in a pipeline (by following the GStreamer Plugin Writer's Guide).
My problem is that I cannot load my plugin in a test application. When I call gst_element_factory_make("myextractor", NULL) the result is always NULL.
More data (I'm not sure this is related):
When I run gst-inspect on my dll I get incomplete output (output generated using cygwin):
beq11049@beqleuleu1nb028 /cygdrive/c/work
$ /cygdrive/c/OSSBuild/GStreamer/v0.10.6/bin/gst-inspect.exe MyProject/Release/gstxyzlibrary.dll
Plugin Details:
Name: myextractor
Description: XYZ Library
Filename: MyProject/Release/gstxyzlibrary.dll
Version: 1.0
License: LGPL
Source module: myextractor
Binary package: MyProject
Origin URL: http://www.example.com/
myextractor: XYZExtractor
1 features:
+-- 1 elements
If I compare this with the avisubtitle addon (from the GStreamer Good Plug-ins package) I get a lot less information for mine.
For example, my plugin says:
1 features:
+-- 1 elements
The avisubtitle plugin says (generated using $ /cygdrive/c/OSSBuild/GStreamer/v0.10.6/bin/gst-inspect.exe avisubtitle):
GObject
+----GstObject
+----GstElement
+----GstAviSubtitle
My question: I need advice on how to debug this / determine what I am missing (enabling debugging output, settings and paths to check and so on). My test code (the call to gst_element_factory_make) is written in a Songbird adon, but I get the same results if I put my code in a separate executable.
It might be because the loader can't find your plugin, you should check that your plugin is in the shared library path:
Make sure you've set the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable to the directory containing your compiled plugin.
In cygwin, add this to your .profile, or run it before you run your program:
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/cygdrive/c/path/to/your/plugin/"
You could also use the -L linker option to specify a search path at compile time.