Benjamin Otte said on 17/10/08 11:59: > Hey, > > Here's the necessary knowledge about audio backend choice: > 1) I don't want to maintain multiple backends, because identifying > bugs in backends I don't use is rather hard. So I try to find the best > one possible for me (I run Ubuntu) and make it work. That is currently > libalsa. > 2) The long-term goal for Swfdec is to switch to Pulse, as it seems to > work anywhere. However, considering that Pulse has no good API to > write to currently[1], I've not yet looked at making the switch.
Yikes. Pulse and ALSA both seem to be inferior compared to OSS. It's a shame that OSS licensing lead Linux to adopt a completely new audio subsystem rather than do what the BSD's did, which was to continue with the last open source OSS version and improve it. > 3) The current Pulse backend is written by Eric Anholt, and he uses it > on FreeBSD. He's not very actively hacking on it, so I guess it might > contain various bugs. > > That said, I can think of 3 ways forward: > 1) Use Swfdec's Pulse output and make it work. Possible problems with Pulse notwithstanding, this appeals to me, and I understand perfectly your desire to support only one audio backend. > 2) Make ALSA work on BSD (probably without direct output through OSS > or Pulse or whatever). Not sure how hard that is, but it'd port you > lots of other apps, too. Creating a BSD ALSA compatibility layer would be great - as you point out it would open the way for applications like Rosegarden to work - but it's a considerable undertaking. A while ago I wrote a NetBSD compatibility layer for raw MIDI, which is a very minor part of the ALSA API, but never got it working satisfactorily. > 3) Revive the OSS backend. > If Pulse wasn't an option, then supporting both ALSA and OSS would appeal to me. As things stand though, I'll carry on trying to get swfdec working with Pulse on NetBSD. > I personally would prefer option 1 or 2. 1, because it would prepare > our Pulse backend for the switch better. And 2, because it would solve > lots of BSD audio issues and make life easier for you guys. Option 3 > is not that interesting for me as I think supporting OSS is like > flogging a dead horse. > > Cheers, > Benjamin > > 1:http://linuxhaters.blogspot.com/2008/10/pulse-my-audio.html > Regards, Chris _______________________________________________ Swfdec mailing list Swfdec@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/swfdec
