Re: GadgetLabs Driver for Alsa Linux

[Takashi Iwai <tiwai@suse.de>]

At Wed, 20 Oct 2004 15:53:28 -0400,
Mike Mazarick wrote:
> 
> As mentioned, there is very little programming skill amoungst the 2 people
> (myself and jole), and the "testbed" will have to be Fedora Core 1 based,
> using Planet CCRMA.   Naturally, if possible, it would be better to use alsa
> 1.X and kernel 2.6, but without a known good test system (one with
> functional apps, working drivers for other cards, etc), I'm not sure if
> proceeding with "the latest and greatest" would be the best choice.

In general, ALSA code is based on the 2.6 style.  The support for the
older kernels are achieved through compatible wrappers.  So, if you
write in the right way, it works in all platforms.


> Since the work hasn't really started, and the effort of building up a
> testbed compared to the effort of writing a driver is unknown at this time,
> I'm open to suggestions here.  I was just a little afraid of getting stuck
> in the cul-de-sac of creating/debugging a test system;  in addition, I noted
> the "how to write an alsa driver" notes were geared around alsa .9.X.  How
> much work is involved in moving from .9 to 1.X?

Not much, but some basic APIs like the buffer allocation have been
changed.  Also some clean-up's for the mainline kernel.  For example,
the removal of snd_magic_* stuff, the new module parameters, etc.

I don't have a specific list of changes.  Maybe you can find from the
diff of Documentation/DocBook/writing-an-alsa-driver.tmpl between
0.9.x and 1.0.x versions.


Takashi


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