Where is the documentation

[muhkuh110777]

Hi there,

I have to develop a general purpose plugin for winamp. I donloaded the so called 5.04 "SDK" and didn't believe my eyes. Is the SDK really just some examples with more or less comments? I don't want to start a flamewar here. I just think I must be missing something. If this is the case please drop me a line where more documentation is available. For instance it took my 2 hours to find find out why my skeleton plugin didn't load until I realized that there is a naming convention requiring the dll to begin with "gen_"!!

Thanks a lot

Markus

[Cummi Bare]

LOL. Well if you're capable of coding a plugin you'll be able to suss out what's going on from the sdk examples. It's pretty clear, the general plugin is a no-brainer. Read the stickys and the forum for your extra docs. Heh heh.

[muhkuh110777]

Ok. Thanks. Of course writing a general plugin is not complicated but some documented header files a no SDK. Of course it's possible to get how things work from the samples but IMHO it's not a good solution. Some additional introductional doc would be a good idea. When you've got documentation that tells you the rules of coding a plugin it is much more productive than "reengineering" them from samples. It's a good thing to have samples though but not as replacement for docs.

For example I looked at the gen_tray sample. It is simple and straight forward but when I wrote my own plugin it just didn't work. Winamp didn't recognize it because I didn't find hint about the naming convention of gereral plugin dlls to start with "gen_". Another issue is the export of functions. Winamp doesn't like C++ decorated ones. So I think everybody using a C++ compiler has to put exported functions in extern "C" sections to make the plugin work with winamp. These are no complicated things after all but it would be a lot better if there was a simple readme explaining it briefly.

Just my opinion. Winamp and the SDK as well are free so I cannot and do not demand anything. If you think my comments are silly just ignore them.

Regards,

Markus

[Cummi Bare]

@muhkuh110777: I know where you're coming from. The thing is I'm not sure that anyone's getting any dough for developing Winamp. I can't remember seeing a 100% newbie tutorial anywhere. I assume it's because the developer is assumed to have a basic knowledge of using Winamp to start with. Plus, the demand for such a tutorial is probably minimal.

I'm sure the file naming convention is covered in these forums as well as the exported function naming.

If you've got a prob I suggest you post here and hope Uncle Saivert, or other benevolent being, comes to your aid.

[murkie]

Yes Markus what you are saying it's the same thing to me. Just want to make a simple dsp/effect plugin and nowhere in the SDK anything about dll naming conventions. Searched the forum a couple of times before I saw how to make Winamp recognize a plugin. Rather frustrating :(

[DrO]

the example projects build the different plugins in the correct format. i will look at adding some information into the relevant header files about each dll needing to be named gen_*, in_*, etc though really from the examples it should be obvious

-daz