Move the binding part to a -sys crate

[alexandre-janniaux]

Hi,

A lot of other crates are using -sys-suffixed crate to bundle the linkage and symbols from the native underlying project. Should vlc-rs do the same ? In a libvlc-sys crate ? Is it out of the scope ?

In addition, I don't know how much bindgen has progressed but it might be a good replacement to a hand-written unsafe binding for the sys part.

[garkimasera]

My plan is to separate native libvlc symbols to libvlc-sys crate at the same time when migration to bindgen is done. But my research on the use of bindgen have not progressed. It will take some time to release libvlc-sys.

[alexandre-janniaux]

Hi, did you start the migration to bindgen already ? I can provide help, and maybe help making this wrapper an official binding if you'd like to.

[garkimasera]

Official? Honestly, I don't have enough time to maintain this crate. Transferring the owner is a good choice for me.

[alexandre-janniaux]

I could probably handle that given that I work almost fulltime on stuff around VLC, but I've never maintained a crate so I'm not sure I alone would be the best candidate for this in the short term unfortunately.

[garkimasera]

OK, I will maintain this for a while. The migration to bindgen has not started, but I will try it in the near future.

[alexandre-janniaux]

Thank you very much ! I'll try to provide PoC too, let's use this ticket for sharing this in the short term if you agree.

[garkimasera]

OK. I created a new branch to try bindgen.

[alexandre-janniaux]

The use-bindgen branch looks quite good ! 👍

[alexandre-janniaux]

I'll help reviewing the MR soon.

In the mean time, I tested migration to libvlc 4.0 and fixed the necessary pieces of the wrapper. I was wondering what you expected from the wrapper itself:

• it could be libvlc-version independant with version being exposed as features. I'm not very fan of it but clang-rs works like that.
• it could be multiple version with backport. It needs more maintaining time but brings a clearer API and smaller package.

What do you prefer ? According to your MR you started to bring the first option ?

[garkimasera]

"v3_00" feature is a workaround when compiling in environments with libvlc v2 like Ubuntu 16.04. I have not yet determined the version strategy. The second option will be better if enable.