[MPlayer-dev-eng] [patch] prefer ALSA over OSS

[Adrian Bunk]

On Sun, Apr 29, 2007 at 02:10:47AM +0200, Reimar Döffinger wrote:
> Hello,
> On Sun, Apr 29, 2007 at 01:11:28AM +0200, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> [...]
> > For general OSS<->ALSA discussions you are more than five years too late.
> 
> Well... It wouldn't necessarily be too late for a libalsa-only vs.
> clean, portable (as in acceptable to support under e.g. BSDs),
> simple and properly documented kernel API for ALSA discussion,
> would that one have a chance?

ALSA isn't an area of the kernel I'm particularly active in, but despite 
this some comments:

First of all, it has taken more than 3 years since the release of
kernel 2.6.0 until now nearly all userspace software supports ALSA.
You would need _very_ good arguments why your implementation would be 
that much better if you want to change the userspace API again.

"properly documented kernel API": If an API is missing documentation, 
fixing this doesn't require an API change.

"portable": Sure, it would be nice if all the different UNIXes would 
have a common API. But could this be realistically achieved?
The UNIXes with big userbases like MacOS X, Linux and Solaris all have 
their own APIs, so either it would have to be agreed on one of them, or 
something completely new invented, implemented on all operating systems, 
and applications converted to using it. I don't see the status quo being 
that bad that people will start doing such a big project.

> Greetings,
> Reimar Döffinger

cu
Adrian

-- 

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