Alsa Driver Scarlett

Alsa Driver Scarlett

[Eugène Bandit]

Hello,

I've come across this earlier post from the alsa-devel mailing list :
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.alsa.devel/126241/focus=126682

It deals with a kernel patch made to support some Focusrite Scarlett 
hardware, you can find the github project page is here : 
https://github.com/smilingthax/alsa-driver_scarlett

I would be really interested in it being integrated into alsa. 
Unfortunately, it appears that the original developer of this patch 
cannot put any time into such a thing. Since I'm not skilled enough to 
perform this integration, i wanted to know if anyone was willing to work 
on this ? I own a Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 and can perform any test to help.

Re: Alsa Driver Scarlett

[Johannes Kroll]

Hey Eugène,

On Sat, 13 Sep 2014 20:38:19 +0200
Eugène Bandit <eugenebandit@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> I've come across this earlier post from the alsa-devel mailing list :
> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.alsa.devel/126241/focus=126682
> 
> It deals with a kernel patch made to support some Focusrite Scarlett 
> hardware, you can find the github project page is here : 
> https://github.com/smilingthax/alsa-driver_scarlett
> 
> I would be really interested in it being integrated into alsa. 
> Unfortunately, it appears that the original developer of this patch 
> cannot put any time into such a thing. Since I'm not skilled enough to 
> perform this integration, i wanted to know if anyone was willing to work 
> on this ? I own a Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 and can perform any test to help.

I'm using a Scarlett 18i8. I'm currently using an older kerner for
which the patch applies, but I'm going to have to upgrade at some
point, so I'm in the same boat. 

I guess I'll need to find the time to port the patch to a recent kernel
when I upgrade, unless someone else does it first.
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Re: Alsa Driver Scarlett

[Orm Finnendahl]

Am Dienstag, den 16. September 2014 um 15:22:27 Uhr (+0200) schrieb Johannes Kroll:
> 
> I guess I'll need to find the time to port the patch to a recent kernel
> when I upgrade, unless someone else does it first.

The patch still works on our recent kernels (we are on debian testing
with a 3.14-2 kernel), atm there is no porting necessary. I can also
confirm that the driver has no known issues on our systems (we use a
couple of Scarlett 18i20 in different configurations). It would be
great, though if the patch could get integrated into alsa. At the
moment it is quite painful for our students with linux laptops as they
have to reapply the patch on every upgrade.

--
Orm Finnendahl
------------------------------------------------------------------
Prof. Orm Finnendahl
Komposition
Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst
Eschersheimer Landstr. 29-39
60322 Frankfurt am Main
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Re: Alsa Driver Scarlett

[Johannes Kroll]

On Tue, 16 Sep 2014 15:49:25 +0200
Orm Finnendahl <orm.finnendahl@selma.hfmdk-frankfurt.de> wrote:

> Am Dienstag, den 16. September 2014 um 15:22:27 Uhr (+0200) schrieb Johannes Kroll:
> > 
> > I guess I'll need to find the time to port the patch to a recent kernel
> > when I upgrade, unless someone else does it first.
> 
> The patch still works on our recent kernels (we are on debian testing
> with a 3.14-2 kernel), atm there is no porting necessary. I can also
> confirm that the driver has no known issues on our systems (we use a
> couple of Scarlett 18i20 in different configurations). It would be
> great, though if the patch could get integrated into alsa. At the
> moment it is quite painful for our students with linux laptops as they
> have to reapply the patch on every upgrade.

Oh, I see. I'm all for integrating this patch into mainline. But I have
never done such a thing, so I don't know how much effort it would be. I
guess it would be a simple thing to do for a routine Alsa developer. 
Anyone? :]

Re: Alsa Driver Scarlett

[David Henningsson]

On 2014-09-16 16:10, Johannes Kroll wrote:
> On Tue, 16 Sep 2014 15:49:25 +0200
> Orm Finnendahl <orm.finnendahl@selma.hfmdk-frankfurt.de> wrote:
>
>> Am Dienstag, den 16. September 2014 um 15:22:27 Uhr (+0200) schrieb Johannes Kroll:
>>>
>>> I guess I'll need to find the time to port the patch to a recent kernel
>>> when I upgrade, unless someone else does it first.
>>
>> The patch still works on our recent kernels (we are on debian testing
>> with a 3.14-2 kernel), atm there is no porting necessary. I can also
>> confirm that the driver has no known issues on our systems (we use a
>> couple of Scarlett 18i20 in different configurations). It would be
>> great, though if the patch could get integrated into alsa. At the
>> moment it is quite painful for our students with linux laptops as they
>> have to reapply the patch on every upgrade.

A tip could be to use the DKMS infrastructure, which recompiles itself 
on kernel upgrades.

> Oh, I see. I'm all for integrating this patch into mainline. But I have
> never done such a thing, so I don't know how much effort it would be. I
> guess it would be a simple thing to do for a routine Alsa developer.
> Anyone? :]

Well, as a first check: Do we have means to contact Tobias Hoffman, and 
possibly other contributors? Having their sign-off would be a good start...

-- 
David Henningsson, Canonical Ltd.
https://launchpad.net/~diwic

Re: Alsa Driver Scarlett

[Johannes Kroll]

On Wed, 17 Sep 2014 14:29:04 +0200
David Henningsson <david.henningsson@canonical.com> wrote:

> Well, as a first check: Do we have means to contact Tobias Hoffman, and 
> possibly other contributors? Having their sign-off would be a good start...

You could reach the patch author via github, I guess.

https://github.com/smilingthax

Re: Alsa Driver Scarlett

[David Henningsson]

Hi Tobias,

I believe you are the author of the repository at 
https://github.com/smilingthax/alsa-driver_scarlett.

Your Scarlett driver is reported to be working fine, and there are some 
requests (see below) to get the driver into mainline Linux. Is this 
something you would be interested in helping out with?

Regards,
   David

On 2014-09-16 16:10, Johannes Kroll wrote:
> On Tue, 16 Sep 2014 15:49:25 +0200
> Orm Finnendahl <orm.finnendahl@selma.hfmdk-frankfurt.de> wrote:
>
>> Am Dienstag, den 16. September 2014 um 15:22:27 Uhr (+0200) schrieb Johannes Kroll:
>>>
>>> I guess I'll need to find the time to port the patch to a recent kernel
>>> when I upgrade, unless someone else does it first.
>>
>> The patch still works on our recent kernels (we are on debian testing
>> with a 3.14-2 kernel), atm there is no porting necessary. I can also
>> confirm that the driver has no known issues on our systems (we use a
>> couple of Scarlett 18i20 in different configurations). It would be
>> great, though if the patch could get integrated into alsa. At the
>> moment it is quite painful for our students with linux laptops as they
>> have to reapply the patch on every upgrade.
>
> Oh, I see. I'm all for integrating this patch into mainline. But I have
> never done such a thing, so I don't know how much effort it would be. I
> guess it would be a simple thing to do for a routine Alsa developer.
> Anyone? :]
> _______________________________________________
> Alsa-devel mailing list
> Alsa-devel@alsa-project.org
> http://mailman.alsa-project.org/mailman/listinfo/alsa-devel
>

-- 
David Henningsson, Canonical Ltd.
https://launchpad.net/~diwic

Re: Alsa Driver Scarlett

[Daniel Mack]

On 09/18/2014 02:02 PM, Johannes Kroll wrote:
> On Wed, 17 Sep 2014 14:29:04 +0200
> David Henningsson <david.henningsson@canonical.com> wrote:
> 
>> Well, as a first check: Do we have means to contact Tobias Hoffman, and 
>> possibly other contributors? Having their sign-off would be a good start...
> 
> You could reach the patch author via github, I guess.
> 
> https://github.com/smilingthax

Well, I wonder how, as there is no email address. There's also a GitHub
issue about mainlining the driver (#1), in which I suggested the first
steps towards submission.

I think David is right - we need at least some sort of acknowledgment
from Tobias to include his code in the kernel.


Daniel

Re: Alsa Driver Scarlett

[Dominik Haumann]

Hi,

> > Orm Finnendahl <orm.finnendahl@selma.hfmdk-frankfurt.de> wrote:
> >> Am Dienstag, den 16. September 2014 um 15:22:27 Uhr (+0200) schrieb 
Johannes Kroll:
> >>> I guess I'll need to find the time to port the patch to a recent kernel
> >>> when I upgrade, unless someone else does it first.
> >> 
> >> The patch still works on our recent kernels (we are on debian testing
> >> with a 3.14-2 kernel), atm there is no porting necessary. I can also
> >> confirm that the driver has no known issues on our systems (we use a
> >> couple of Scarlett 18i20 in different configurations). It would be
> >> great, though if the patch could get integrated into alsa. At the
> >> moment it is quite painful for our students with linux laptops as they
> >> have to reapply the patch on every upgrade.
> > 
> > Oh, I see. I'm all for integrating this patch into mainline. But I have
> > never done such a thing, so I don't know how much effort it would be. I
> > guess it would be a simple thing to do for a routine Alsa developer.
> > Anyone? :]

just joined this mailing list yesterday for exactly the same reason: Bought an 
Focusrite Scarlett 6i6, and while it works with jack, it doesn't show up in 
the alsa mixer. As I understand, this patch should also work better for the 
6i6, so I'd also very much appreciate getting this patch into the kernel.

If you need a tester for the 6i6 device, I'd happily try a patch.

Greetings,
Dominik

Re: Alsa Driver Scarlett

[Tobias Hoffmann]

On 18/09/14 14:29, David Henningsson wrote:
> Hi Tobias,
>
> I believe you are the author of the repository at 
> https://github.com/smilingthax/alsa-driver_scarlett.

Yes, I am.

> Your Scarlett driver is reported to be working fine, and there are 
> some requests (see below) to get the driver into mainline Linux. Is 
> this something you would be interested in helping out with?

I'm all for including the driver into mainline, but I do not have any time
to go through N iterations of a patch to get it there.

I *might* be able to do a initial cleaned up version against tiwai's 
for-next in the next few days, if that helps.

Other than that, I will happily (try to) answer questions about the code.

   Tobias


> Regards,
>   David
>
> On 2014-09-16 16:10, Johannes Kroll wrote:
>> On Tue, 16 Sep 2014 15:49:25 +0200
>> Orm Finnendahl <orm.finnendahl@selma.hfmdk-frankfurt.de> wrote:
>>
>>> Am Dienstag, den 16. September 2014 um 15:22:27 Uhr (+0200) schrieb 
>>> Johannes Kroll:
>>>>
>>>> I guess I'll need to find the time to port the patch to a recent 
>>>> kernel
>>>> when I upgrade, unless someone else does it first.
>>>
>>> The patch still works on our recent kernels (we are on debian testing
>>> with a 3.14-2 kernel), atm there is no porting necessary. I can also
>>> confirm that the driver has no known issues on our systems (we use a
>>> couple of Scarlett 18i20 in different configurations). It would be
>>> great, though if the patch could get integrated into alsa. At the
>>> moment it is quite painful for our students with linux laptops as they
>>> have to reapply the patch on every upgrade.
>>
>> Oh, I see. I'm all for integrating this patch into mainline. But I have
>> never done such a thing, so I don't know how much effort it would be. I
>> guess it would be a simple thing to do for a routine Alsa developer.
>> Anyone? :]
>> _______________________________________________
>> Alsa-devel mailing list
>> Alsa-devel@alsa-project.org
>> http://mailman.alsa-project.org/mailman/listinfo/alsa-devel
>>
>

Re: Alsa Driver Scarlett

[David Henningsson]

On 2014-09-18 18:20, Tobias Hoffmann wrote:
> On 18/09/14 14:29, David Henningsson wrote:
>> Hi Tobias,
>>
>> I believe you are the author of the repository at
>> https://github.com/smilingthax/alsa-driver_scarlett.
>
> Yes, I am.
>
>> Your Scarlett driver is reported to be working fine, and there are
>> some requests (see below) to get the driver into mainline Linux. Is
>> this something you would be interested in helping out with?
>
> I'm all for including the driver into mainline, but I do not have any time
> to go through N iterations of a patch to get it there.
>
> I *might* be able to do a initial cleaned up version against tiwai's
> for-next in the next few days, if that helps.
>
> Other than that, I will happily (try to) answer questions about the code.
>
>    Tobias

Ok, thanks for the update!

As I looked through the patches I noticed Robin Gareus (now cc:ed) were 
also the author of these patches, I assume you're okay with upstreaming 
it too, Robin?

There seem to be these "main" patches:

  * Initial code for 18i6 mixer (Robin)
  * Added log scale meters for 18i6 mixer (Robin)
  * Added code for 18i8 and "big rewrite" (Tobias)
  * Added code for 18i20 (Tobias)
  * Added code for 8i6 (Tobias)
  * Added code for 6i6 (Tobias)

...the rest of the patches are fixups which can be squashed into the 
existing patches when mainlining.

I could commit to do this squashing, run the remaining patches through 
checkpatch and submit the result on alsa-devel. I have no hw to test 
with though.

The big rewrite probably means that the rewrite patch should be squashed 
with the initial patch too, and list both of you as authors on the 
resulting patch. (Btw, what's the Linux kernel standard for that? To add 
a co-authored-by?)


>
>
>> Regards,
>>   David
>>
>> On 2014-09-16 16:10, Johannes Kroll wrote:
>>> On Tue, 16 Sep 2014 15:49:25 +0200
>>> Orm Finnendahl <orm.finnendahl@selma.hfmdk-frankfurt.de> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Am Dienstag, den 16. September 2014 um 15:22:27 Uhr (+0200) schrieb
>>>> Johannes Kroll:
>>>>>
>>>>> I guess I'll need to find the time to port the patch to a recent
>>>>> kernel
>>>>> when I upgrade, unless someone else does it first.
>>>>
>>>> The patch still works on our recent kernels (we are on debian testing
>>>> with a 3.14-2 kernel), atm there is no porting necessary. I can also
>>>> confirm that the driver has no known issues on our systems (we use a
>>>> couple of Scarlett 18i20 in different configurations). It would be
>>>> great, though if the patch could get integrated into alsa. At the
>>>> moment it is quite painful for our students with linux laptops as they
>>>> have to reapply the patch on every upgrade.
>>>
>>> Oh, I see. I'm all for integrating this patch into mainline. But I have
>>> never done such a thing, so I don't know how much effort it would be. I
>>> guess it would be a simple thing to do for a routine Alsa developer.
>>> Anyone? :]
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Alsa-devel mailing list
>>> Alsa-devel@alsa-project.org
>>> http://mailman.alsa-project.org/mailman/listinfo/alsa-devel
>>>
>>
>

-- 
David Henningsson, Canonical Ltd.
https://launchpad.net/~diwic