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author | Daniel Baumann <daniel.baumann@progress-linux.org> | 2024-04-07 18:28:17 +0000 |
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committer | Daniel Baumann <daniel.baumann@progress-linux.org> | 2024-04-07 18:28:17 +0000 |
commit | 7a46c07230b8d8108c0e8e80df4522d0ac116538 (patch) | |
tree | d483300dab478b994fe199a5d19d18d74153718a /doc/pipewire-design.dox | |
parent | Initial commit. (diff) | |
download | pipewire-0bfb2679f751193be0325ef92c84c3863d22ac84.tar.xz pipewire-0bfb2679f751193be0325ef92c84c3863d22ac84.zip |
Adding upstream version 0.3.65.upstream/0.3.65upstream
Signed-off-by: Daniel Baumann <daniel.baumann@progress-linux.org>
Diffstat (limited to 'doc/pipewire-design.dox')
-rw-r--r-- | doc/pipewire-design.dox | 70 |
1 files changed, 70 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/doc/pipewire-design.dox b/doc/pipewire-design.dox new file mode 100644 index 0000000..59b29ed --- /dev/null +++ b/doc/pipewire-design.dox @@ -0,0 +1,70 @@ +/** \page page_design Design + +A short overview of PipeWire's design. + +PipeWire is a media server that can run graphs of multimedia nodes. +Nodes can run inside the server process or in separate processes, +communicating with the server. + +PipeWire was designed to: + +- Be efficient for raw video using fd passing and audio with + shared ringbuffers. +- Be able to provide/consume/process media from any process. +- Provide policy to restrict access to devices and streams. +- Be easily extensible. + +Although an initial goal, the design is not limited to raw video +only and should be able to handle compressed video and other +media as well. + +PipeWire uses the \ref page_spa "SPA plugin API" for the nodes in the graph. +SPA is designed for low-latency and efficient processing of any multimedia +format. SPA also provides a number of helper utilities that are not available +in the standard C library. + +Some of the application we intend to build: + +- v4l2 device provider: Provide controlled access to v4l2 devices + and share one device between multiple processes. +- gnome-shell video provider: GNOME Shell provides a node that + gives the contents of the frame buffer for screen sharing or + screen recording. +- Audio server: Mix and playback multiple audio streams. The design + is more like CRAS (Chromium audio server) than PulseAudio and with + the added benefit that processing can be arranged in a graph. +- Professional audio graph processing like JACK. +- Media playback backend. + + +# Protocol + +The native protocol and object model is similar to +[Wayland](https://wayland.freedesktop.org) but with custom +serialization/deserialization of messages. This is because the data structures +in the messages are more complicated and not easily expressible in XML. +See \ref page_module_protocol_native for details. + + +# Extensibility + +The functionality of the server is implemented and extended with modules and +extensions. Modules are server side bits of logic that hook into various +places to provide extra features. This mostly means controlling the processing +graph in some way. See \ref page_pipewire_modules for a list of current +modules. + +Extensions are the client side version of the modules. Most extensions provide +both a client side and server side init function. New interfaces or new object +implementation can easily be added with modules/extensions. + +Some of the extensions that can be written: + +- Protocol extensions: A client/server side API (.h) together with protocol + extensions and server/client side logic to implement a new object or + interface. +- A module to check security of method calls. +- A module to automatically create, link or relink nodes. +- A module to suspend idle nodes. + +*/ |