[gmpi] Re: Reqs draft

  • From: Tim Hockin <thockin@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: gmpi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2003 13:56:27 -0800

On Sun, Nov 09, 2003 at 08:48:00AM -0500, Paul Davis wrote:
> >> Loading a dll is pretty lightweight.
> >
> >The DLL can be encrypted by an hardkey and may need nearly one second to be
> >loaded. The DLL can be protected by different method (CD-checkup, network
> >validation etc) that slowdown the loading process. 
> 
> ah, this is the core of the speed concerns, eh? so, to handle the
> paranoia (somewhat justified paranoia :) of proprietary developers, we

It's not an invalid concern...

> information that relates the plugin needs to be stored with the
> plugin. as a compromise, i would accept the following idea: for a
> plugin stored in a file called "foo", let there be another shared
> object (DLL) called "foo-bar" (where the "-bar") is constant across
> all foo. when a host discovers the plugin "foo", it actually opens
> "foobar" to read metadata about "foo". "foobar" is small, and always
> unprotected by any DRM system. how does it discover "foo" and not
> think that "foobar" is a plugin as well? tricky, but perfectly
> finessable if we were to agree on this general idea.

I have admitted I could accept some such argument.

Without knowing anything about DRM issues, a question:
- if a dll is protected, is the entire DLL encrypted?  Who decrypts it?  Or
  is just most of it encrypted and the instantiation code does the
  decrypting and lock checking?

The thing I DON'T like about storing this stuff in an XML file is that it
SHOULD NOT be user editable.  It is not user-defined stuff.

Assuming that unlocking is actually done by the dll itself, then my own
scheme works just as well.

load the dll (lightweight, paging in very little)
call the probe entry point
  -- returns all the plugin descriptors (could even be XML!)
store the plugin descriptors (could be XML)
unload the dll

What's so wrong with that?

And for my own understanding, assuming the plugin author provides an
external XML file, how do you handle wrappers?  Assume I have a VST->GMPI
wrapper plugin.  I want to enumerate all the plugins in C:\VSTPlugins as
GMPI plugins.  As I see it you *need* to run code to probe those.

Tim

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