I've been working for some time on a Perl based media player for my car (Linux).

I was initially utilizing SDL and XMMS, and then SDL only as XMMS. The problem is, it seems SDL_Perl isn't under very active development and, perhaps it's just my experience, it's fragile as hell.

I had some other issues, mainly leaking lot's of memory, but in the spirit of OSS, I tracked them down, squashed them and provided patches and added a feature or two.

Not sure if they were integrated into the newest build yet, but it doesn't matter as the newest build doesn't build. Been waiting for near two months on that and the dev list is pretty much dead. This isn't a knock against anyone involved with those projects, I just need to find something more stable and/or more actively maintained.

I can't even add my own patches as I can't get Perl_SDL to build with the apt stuff alone, which means all source, which would be fine, except no matter how many times I try, something essential is whacky. (Horrible sound with static unless I specify 48000 as the mixer rate, most mp3s play twice as fast if do specify 48000, etc)

I basically want similar screen handing to SDL, pretty simple, just blitting sprites and mouse/keyboard events, and the ability to play MP3 and maybe OGG. Video is not a requirement, but it wouldn't hurt.

Anyone have any suggestions or am I stuck just rebuilding the wheel? My free time is pretty sparse right now, but as it stands, I've spent 20x the effort screwing around with the SDL install, then the media player software. I'm at my wit's end, if I have to do a clean install again, I'm going to put my foot through it.

Thanks,
-Lee
"To be civilized is to deny one's nature."

In reply to Alternatives to SDL by shotgunefx

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