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

[Rich Felker]

On Fri, May 04, 2007 at 02:16:54AM +0400, Vladimir Mosgalin wrote:
> Hi Adam Tlałka!
> 
>  On 2007.05.03 at 22:44:41 +0200, Adam Tlałka wrote next:
> 
> > Look at the fusd - you can have traditional open,close,ioctl access to
> 
> I know that it's possible, and sometimes it's desired. However, when
> there already is alsa library, what's the point of going back to kernel
> calls which just would be routed back to that alsa library? It only
> increases complexity, slowdowns and gives less features.

Decreases complexity. Massively.

> Of course, if no alsa existed, most safe way to introduce "sound
> plugins" and other stuff would be such interface. But now, when alsa is
> dominating.. why bother?

Because ALSA IS FUNDAMENTALLY WRONG.

> > And you can easily control who can do what by just UNIX rights or ACL's
> > or other kernel mehanisms. In case of pure lib approach it's much more
> 
> Honestly, unix rights aren't working well for audio, with all that pam
> chmod/chown stuff which gains nothing but some compatiblity so that unix
> rights won't get in the way..

Then your system was broken. They work exactly right. chmod is
idiotic; just use proper group semantics and add a "hangup" ioctl if
you need it.

> > Modern OSS kernel API is good enough IMHO and documented too.
> 
> I gave an example: I have usb soundcard, I can't use oss driver in
> mplayer.

THEN REPORT THE BUG AND HELP SOMEONE FIX IT!!

> > > don't honestly believe that anyone would want that. The thing is,
> > > modern audio is no simpler and just as well requires library
> > > approach, it's the least problematic solution.
> > 
> > It's very problematic and completly non-Unix way.
> 
> Programs don't access video cards for 3d acceleration directly, they use
> libraries; good programs don't read terminfo themselves, they use

Yes they do. ncurses is a huge waste AND a huge pain; directly using
terminfo is much easier and halves memory usage.

Of course ignoring terminfo entirely and just using a portable subset
of vt100 is even better.

Rich