The VideoLAN Forums

Is it possible to provide VLC an additional folder where to look for plugins via command line? Or even to provide a path to a specific plugin file? The only related options I found in the help output and in the forum are --plugin-path and --data-path but both seem to be deprecated.

You should set an ENV variable

As far as I see it, vlc.c overwrites the content of the environment variable VLC_PLUGIN_PATH in line 134.

It does not.

Am I missing something? In vlc.c, line 134, this happens:

#ifdef TOP_BUILDDIR
setenv ("VLC_PLUGIN_PATH", TOP_BUILDDIR"/modules", 1).
setenv ("VLC_DATA_PATH", TOP_SRCDIR"/share", 1);
#endif

man setenv: The setenv() function adds the variable name to the environment with the value value, if name does not already exist. If name does exist in the environment, then its value is changed to value if overwrite is nonzero; if overwrite is zero, then the value of name is not changed.

ifdef...

Sure, but TOP_BUILDDIR is set when you compile from GIT.

Of course, it is. The static VLC build is meant to debug the git tree and its plugins.

Ok, I see. That means that with VLC built from GIT there is no way to add a plugin from outside the tree, right?

That question means nothing. The source code does what you make it do.