From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
I tinker with VLC using and... so far my "trick" is a bit dirty, namely I don't "control" it as much as I killall potential running instances then I start cvlc again with the right parameters. If you want continuity though you might not want that.
Note also that if you plan to do scripting check mpv as it's a bit easier to tinker with IMHO.
Python
Check https://pypi.org/project/python-vlc/ then for Python bindings, that should give you the affordances you need.
VLC appears to support MPRIS, so commands like
$ playerctl play-pause
$ playerctl next
$ playerctl previous
Should be able to control it. See the Relevant arch wiki page for more info.
VLC also appears to have a TUI interface. Check out the VLC wiki
VLC also appears to have a TUI interface. Check out the VLC wiki
There's also a CLI interface accessible through cvlc
Thank you so much! One more thing: would there be a way to check if the user has playerctl installed on their system? Or is there a Python package like it?
You can test if a command exists in several ways, but the most portable one should be using command -v which is POSIX.
if command -v playerctl &> /dev/null
# do things
else
# warn and exit
end
You could always run whereis playerctl and parse the output with awk or sed
whereis is not a Bash built-in so it may itself not be installed, plus it exits 0 and returns output even on no match requiring additional logic/processing. which or command are more robust choices for this usecase
If you don’t want a playerctl dependency you can use a dbus library to check for mpris players manually, though it’s a little less readable
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/MPRIS
In section 2.3 it explains how to use D-Bus and I think OP should use it instead
That depends on your distro. On Debian/ubuntu(-based) distro's, you can try apt list --installed playerctl, which will output nothing if the package isn't yet installed, or the package name with version info if it is installed. To install it, run sudo apt install playerctl
On arch(-based) distro's, you can try pacman -Qi playerctl, which should return an error if there is no such package installed, or several lines of info if it is installed. To install it, run sudo pacman -S playerctl, ideally after running a full system upgrade with sudo pacman -Syu
Testing if the current shell can execute something does not require looking at the installed packages, there are portable ways to do that