Forward: Re: questions for alsa-devel

[Takashi Iwai <tiwai@suse.de>]

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From: Paul Davis <pbd@op.net>
To: Thierry Vignaud <tvignaud@mandrakesoft.com>
Cc: Takashi Iwai <tiwai@suse.de>, alsa-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: questions for alsa-devel
Date: Wed, 02 Oct 2002 10:58:44 -0400
Message-ID: <20021002145420.6F590146FB@Cantor.suse.de>

   [ the usual forward request for alsa-devel@lists.sourceforge.net ]

>> 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 will remains the same whatever you compiled the alsa
>modules in the same time you compiled the kernel or as a separate
>pacakge : applications linked with alsa-0.5 library won't be able to
>dialog with alsa-0.9.0 kernel ...

which applications are they? i know of very few ALSA apps that use
0.5, and to be honest, i think it would be much better for mandrake to
not distribute them.

>> updating from 8.2 to 9.0 over a 56k link strikes me as a pretty
>> absurd step to take.
>
>then, unless you absolutely need the fixes provided by the latest alsa
>driver for your card, there's no point in upgrading it without
>upgrading libalsa and relevant applications...

the applications mean nothing to me, since i write audio apps for
linux, and any existing ones that use 0.5 are not of much use to me
for many different reasons.

i know about the rest of ALSA. thierry, perhaps you don't know that
i've been a significant contributor to ALSA for several years,
including writing 3 lowlevel drivers, and participating in design
discussions and general bitching sessions on alsa-devel for quite some
time now.

>> 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.

>if you want less drivers and less features, that's your problem.

no, i just wanted a system that would work. microtel shipped me a
system with an audio chip not properly supported by ALSA 0.5. since
i've been using ALSA for 3 or 4 years now, i naturally assumed that it
would be simple to compile and install 0.9. it seems i was wrong about
that. 

--p

ps. you probably know about the related problems with microtel
    shipping systems with a video chipset not properly supported
    by either the kernel framebuffer or X11. this isn't a purely
    sound-related issue :)

	



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