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

[Uoti Urpala]

On Thu, 2007-05-03 at 23:03 +0200, Reimar Döffinger wrote:
> On Thu, May 03, 2007 at 11:32:06PM +0400, Vladimir Mosgalin wrote:
> > Simple: you can't (and shouldn't) move everything to kernel. Audio
> > requires pretty advanced stuff, like user-configurable resampling or
> > stereo-to-surround mixing, or surround sound ajustements because user's
> > audio system's setup isn't ideal.
> 
> So you need a library on top of the kernel API. No problem there. But
> why is it necessary for that to use an obscure undocumented kernel API?

It's not necessary, but maintaining a stable and documented kernel API
would be more work. We don't make every every interface within MPlayer
public and documented either - not because we want to keep them obscure
and undocumented, but because it's significantly less work and being
able to change them with less concern for interoperability makes
development easier.

Using the kernel API directly could be useful for a few people. If you
could have support for that magically for free then having it would
likely be better than not having it. Whether it would be worth the cost
in the real world isn't so black and white.

> Why is it necessary to make it impossible to use that direct kernel API
> for all those where this "pretty advanced stuff" only causes problems
> like it did for over a year for MPlayer?

Would it really have made sense for MPlayer to use a direct kernel
interface, even if a stable one had existed? Would MPlayer just ignore
the configurability of ALSA or reimplement it? Yes there were problems
with early ALSA versions, but I don't think a kernel interface would
have helped.