[MPlayer-dev-eng] Practical outcomes of the ALSA thread

[Reimar Döffinger]

Hello,
On Fri, May 04, 2007 at 12:55:06PM -0400, Rich Felker wrote:
> Let's keep flames in the other thread if we can. Here I want to
> discuss the original question, MPlayer's default/preference.

I agree, and nothing I say is intended as a flame, please try to read it
that way ;-)

> 1. Desire for support for audio hardware that does not presently work
> with the OSS emulation, either due to bugs in the kernel or in MPlayer
> (it's disputed where the bug is).

Should be fixed by making ao_oss see the problem and allow fallback to
ALSA.

> 2. Desire to use ALSA-specific features (soft mixing? etc.?) with
> MPlayer.

Hmm... this might both be according or against the user's intention, so
I think this an argument for neither preference.

[...]
> 1. Lack of trust for the quality and reliability of ALSA due to past
> record of bugs in both ALSA itself and the MPlayer AO module.

I think they are basically gone on up-to-date systems. But not all
systems are up to date by far, so I consider this a reason to delay
things a bit more.

> 2. Difficulty and uncertainty of using the ALSA API correctly due to
> lack of documentation and stability.

This is only a problem when changes or a new ALSA maintainer are needed.
But OSS does not have a maintainer either, so I think this can't be
really used as an argument - unless you think of the kernel API being
changed in a way that breaks old ALSA libs, in which case I think the
risk is small enough to be accepted.

> 3. Belief that OSS API is technically better, and the ideological wish
> for applications (specifically MPlayer) to take a stand and push for
> the better API by maintaining it as the default.

Hm. Not such a good argument. Fixing/improving OSS-emulation would be a
much better way to help it.

Either way it does not seem like a pressing issue, distributions and
binary packages can adjust it via default configuration.
I'd also like to mention that changing the default will not do any good
to anyone already using MPlayer, actually the opposite, since those who
want ALSA already have it in the config file -> no change. For everyone
else OSS works well enough and changing the default can only create
issues. So only new users compiling themselves are the only ones to
really profit from such a change.

Greetings,
Reimar Döffinger