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Linux/macOS media player based on GStreamer and GTK

Glide Media Player

Glide is a simple and minimalistic media player relying on GStreamer for the multimedia support and GTK+ for the user interface. Glide should be able to play any multimedia format supported by GStreamer, locally or remotely hosted. Glide is developed in Rust and was tested on Linux and macOS so far. It should also work on Windows, please let me know if anyone managed to test it on that platform.

I aim to keep this project simple and it probably won't grow to become a very complicated GUI. If you feel adventurous and willing to help, feel free to pick up a task from the TODO list and open a PR. Users are also encouraged to file issues on the Github bug tracker of course.

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Installation

Install it with Cargo:

  1. Install RustUp:

    curl https://sh.rustup.rs -sSf | sh
    
  2. Install GStreamer and GTK+. On Debian/Linux:

    sudo apt install gstreamer1.0-plugins-{base,good,bad} libgstreamer-plugins-{bad,base}1.0-dev
    sudo apt install libgtk-3-dev gstreamer1.0-{gl,gtk3}
    

    On macOS, with brew:

    brew install pango gstreamer gtk+3
    brew install --build-from-source --with-pango --with-{libogg,libvorbis,opus,theora} gst-plugins-base
    brew install --build-from-source --with-libvpx gst-plugins-good
    brew install gst-plugins-bad
    
  3. Install Glide:

    cargo install glide
    # or if you want to have automatic update checking:
    cargo install --features self-updater glide
    

Packaging status

Flatpak

This is the most recommended way to use Glide as it will allow the maintainers to more easily reproduce reported bugs.

Glide is available on Flathub. After setting up the flathub Flatpak remote as documented in Flathub, install with the following command, or through GNOME Software.

flatpak install net.baseart.Glide

Fedora

Available in COPR:

sudo dnf copr enable atim/glide-rs -y
sudo dnf install glide-rs

Using Glide

There is currently only one way to use Glide, using the command line interface:

glide /path/to/localfile.mp4 http://some.com/remote/file.mp4

At some point I will add file chooser support and improve integration for desktop so that all you need to do is double-click on a media file or drag it to the Glide window.

Once running you can use some menus to switch the subtitle and audio tracks, play, pause, seek and switch the window to fullscreen. There are also some keyboard shortcuts for these actions:

  • play/pause: space
  • seek forward: meta-right or alt-left
  • seek backward: meta-left or alt-right
  • switch to fullscreen: meta-f or alt-f
  • exit from fullscreen: escape
  • quit the application: meta-q or ctrl-q
  • load a subtitle file: meta-s or alt-s
  • increase volume: meta-up or alt-up
  • decrease volume: meta-up or alt-down
  • mute the audio track: meta-m or alt-m
  • open a new file: meta-o or alt-o

Contact

I usually hang out on Freenode IRC, in #gstreamer using the philn nickname. Feel free to also reach out by mail (check git logs to find my address).

Release procedure

  • Bump version in Cargo.toml and meson.build

  • Add release info in appstream file and make sure it is valid...

    appstream-util validate data/net.baseart.Glide.metainfo.xml
    
  • Commit and tag new version:

    git ci -am "Bump to ..."
    git tag -s "version..."
    
  • Build tarball:

    mkdir -p _build
    cargo install cargo-vendor
    pip3 install --user -U meson
    meson _build
    ninja -C _build release
    
  • Publish version and tag:

    git push --tags
    git push
    
  • Update crate on crates.io:

    cargo package
    cargo publish
    
  • Upload tarball from _build/dist/ to Github

  • TODO: Upload self-update binaries to Github