Question

I want to write lirc plugin for totem (linux video application) and one of option of this lirc plugin is to toggle between “totem” and another video application (“vlc” or “mplayer”)

Part of code which execute lirc command:

if (strcasecmp (cmd, "video") == 0)
    {
            gchar **argv;
            exit_totem();
            g_shell_parse_argv ("vlc", NULL, &argv, NULL);
            g_spawn_async (NULL, argv, NULL, G_SPAWN_SEARCH_PATH, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL);
            g_strfreev (argv);
    }

For this command I want to assign only one value “video” (example lircrc file configuration):

begin
    prog = totem
    button = MEDIA
    config = video
end

Problem:

How to make lirc plugin to execute “vlc” or “mplayer” if one of this is installed.

Behavior:

Press button MEDIA on remote, if vlc is installed plugin to execute vlc otherwise if mplayer is installed plugin to execute mplayer and if none of them are not installed, plugin to do nothing.

In pseudo code that does not know to solve it:

if (strcasecmp (cmd, "video") == 0)
    {

     if (vlc installed)
     ------------------
        gchar **argv;
        exit_totem();
        g_shell_parse_argv ("vlc", NULL, &argv, NULL);
        g_spawn_async (NULL, argv, NULL, G_SPAWN_SEARCH_PATH, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL);
        g_strfreev (argv);

     else (mplayer installed)
     ------------------------
        gchar **argv;
        exit_totem();
        g_shell_parse_argv ("mplayer", NULL, &argv, NULL);
        g_spawn_async (NULL, argv, NULL, G_SPAWN_SEARCH_PATH, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL);
        g_strfreev (argv);           
}

Thanks and regards,

GEO

Answer 1

Wouldn’t you just call something like:

 gchar **output;
 g_spawn_command_line_sync("which vlc",output,NULL,NULL,NULL); 
 if (!g_str_has_suffix (&output,"which no"))
 {
 // call vlc goes here
 }
 gchar **output2;
 g_spawn_command_line_sync("which mplayer",output2,NULL,NULL,NULL); 
 if (!g_str_has_suffix (&output2,"which no"))
 {
 // call mplayer goes here
 }
 g_strfreev (output); 
 g_strfreev (output2); 

For a more detailed example using IO Channels for reading output instead of just g_str_has_suffix see Spawning processes using glib.