On Mon July 6 2009 19:14:33 Clemens Ladisch wrote: > Any distro that ships with OSSv4 would also ship the v4 soundcard.h. > Similarly, anybody who creates an 'unofficial' binary package with OSSv4 > support for an OSSv4-less distro would compile it with OSSv4 installed. > So I don't quite understand under what circumstances you would want to > have the soundcard.h file shipped separately.
Well, the idea is to allow an "official" binary package, even for distros like Debian or Fedora, without forcing the build machine to have OSSv4 installed, or getting the soundcard.h file themselves. I don't think it's all that different from using dlopen() in programs. The only cost to non-OSSv4 users would be a negligible increase in package size (if building the OSSv4 support is enabled in configure). GStreamer already uses this approach (of including an OSSv4 soundcard.h) without any problems (see sys/oss4 directory in gstreamer-plugins-bad). I can install gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad under Debian, and get the oss4 plugin even though the build machine doesn't have oss4. > Anyway, the easiest way to ensure widespread distribution of the v4 > soundcard.h would be to force it into the kernel by writing a patch to > add (at least some part of) OSSv4 support to ALSA's OSS emulation. As for the general issue, your acceptance of OSSv4 emulation in ALSA is welcome, and this is a good idea for other parts of the API. However, I think that practical support for the OSSv4 mixer API[1] is easiest to do by including a "soundcard.h", for two reasons: 1) The OSSv4 mixer API is completely different from the OSSv3 one, and I suspect emulation won't be "easiest way". 2) Most users (especially novice ones) use the mixer programs which comes with their desktop, so there are two, three programs which have almost all of the market share. Of the main desktops, Gnome and Xfce already are able to support OSSv4 mixer on practically all distros (both have mixer programs based on gstreamer) and if this idea is accepted, so will KDE (kmix). So by having a soundcard.h included in merely two source packages, we eliminate 90%[2] of the user discomfort regarding this issue... [1] http://manuals.opensound.com/developer/MIXER.html [2] http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS8454912761.html - granted, not very scientific, but I suspect the main bias is in excluding novice users, so the actual percentage is higher. Besides, users technical enough to use (say) fluxbox can easily find OSSv4 compatible mixer programs, like the included oss(x)mix... Yours, Yair K. _______________________________________________ oss-devel mailing list oss-devel@mailman.opensound.com http://mailman.opensound.com/mailman/listinfo/oss-devel
