Re: Forward: Re: questions for alsa-devel

[Takashi Iwai <tiwai@suse.de>]

> >> i have a bit of a problem with all of this. why doesn't ALSA build
> >> "out of the box"? the description you've given of what is necessary
> >> to get this to work seems (for the most part) to be a bit
> >> ridiculous.
> >
> >insulting people that take time to answer you has always been a
> >constructive & efficient communication way.
> 
> sorry, i wasn't trying to be insulting. its just that my experience of
> using ALSA for several years when built with a kernel from kernel.org
> has been that i just type:
> 
>      cd .../alsa-cvs/alsa-{driver,lib,utils}
> then
>      cvscompile
> or
>      ./configure && make && make install
> 
> and it works. i was very suprised when this did not happen with my new
> mandrake system.
 
the problem is that many different kernel binaries are built using the
same kernel tree, i.e. there are many different kernel configs while
there is only one kernel-source package.
thus you have to adjust the kernel config by yourself anyway.

in case building the kernel from scratach, you'll surely configure the
tree once in prior to build of alsa modules.  this ensures you having
the correct kernel tree.
but in the case of distro's kernel package, the default configuration
might not match with the running kernel unless you set up properly.
and, much worse is that this small "tune-up" is dependent on each
distro (for example, the location of config files, etc.)

it might be possible to hack a spec file to change such things
automatically.  but, as you know, hacking a spec file is awesome and
makes the situation more more complicated ;)


> >> having to specifically install kernel source to compile ALSA (and
> >> presumably other drivers) seems very odd to me. i would understand
> >> if ALSA just failed to compile without that step, but i didn't ask
> >> for or say no to a kernel source package, and ALSA compiled just
> >> fine.
> >
> >alsa can compile fine as an extra package providing you've kernel
> >headers and the right links in /boot and /lib/modules (config, build,
> >System.map, ...)
> 
> well, i haven't changed any of that stuff since the install of mdk8.2,
> alsa compiled just fine, but you can't modprobe any of the results due
> to missing symbols.
 
the modules can be compiled without any complains even with a wrong
(i mean, mismatching) configuration.  please check the kernel config
again.


Takashi


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