Re: [PATCH] ALSA: core: don't return uninitialized snd_compr_tstamp

[Pierre-Louis Bossart <pierre-louis.bossart@linux.intel.com>]

> The snd_compr_update_tstamp() can only fill in the snd_compr_tstamp
> if the codec implements the pointer() function. If that happened
> the code was previously returning uninitialized garbage in the
> tstamp because it wasn't initialized anywhere.
>
> This change zero-fills the tstamp in the two places it is used
> before calling snd_compr_update_tstamp(), and also has
> snd_compr_update_tstamp() return an error indication if it
> can't provide a tstamp. For the case of snd_compr_calc_avail()
> it ignores this error because we still need to return info on
> the available buffer space even if we can't provide tstamp
> info - when the tstamp is not valid all fields are now
> guaranteed to be zero.

I think I am missing something here. For compressed data, the DSP really 
needs to return a timestamp or the application will not be able to track 
the audio time, it'll only be able to refill buffers. Since with 
variable-rate compression we cannot translate bytes to time, isn't it a 
requirement that timestamps be supported for this API? If you don't 
support the .pointer, how will you provide this information to 
user-space levels?
Thanks,
-Pierre