From owner-freebsd-multimedia@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Jun 1 16:34:43 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-multimedia@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-multimedia@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 633EE16A41C for ; Wed, 1 Jun 2005 16:34:43 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from dev@opensound.com) Received: from rwcrmhc13.comcast.net (rwcrmhc13.comcast.net [204.127.198.39]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1A0C743D1F for ; Wed, 1 Jun 2005 16:34:42 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from dev@opensound.com) Received: from [192.1.2.1] (c-24-127-17-4.hsd1.ca.comcast.net[24.127.17.4]) by comcast.net (rwcrmhc13) with ESMTP id <200506011634410150099ecbe>; Wed, 1 Jun 2005 16:34:42 +0000 Message-ID: <429DE39D.2060501@opensound.com> Date: Wed, 01 Jun 2005 09:34:37 -0700 From: 4Front Technologies User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.7) Gecko/20050414 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Scott Long References: <429CB532.2010601@opensound.com> <20050601135747.vza4dgehcc8ks0ok@netchild.homeip.net> <429DDB49.2060209@samsco.org> In-Reply-To: <429DDB49.2060209@samsco.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: freebsd-multimedia@freebsd.org, Alexander Leidinger Subject: Re: Syncing with 4Front X-BeenThere: freebsd-multimedia@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Multimedia discussions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 01 Jun 2005 16:34:43 -0000 Scott Long wrote: > Alexander Leidinger wrote: > >> 4Front Technologies wrote: >> >>> As 4Front Technologies gets ready to announce OSS v4.0 later this year >>> (the 10th anniversary of OSS), we'd like to offer our assistance. >> >> >> >> Since my personal opinion is to sync with the official OSS API, I'm very >> pleased to hear that. What kind of assistance do you offer? >> >>> ALSA is way too complex at the API layer but still very similar to OSS >>> at the driver level (naturally since they started from OSS!). We have >>> developed a ALSA<->OSS library called SALSA (for Simple ALSA) that gives >>> you some level of translation between the few ALSA-only apps and OSS >>> compatible drivers and it's under LGPL and we can talk about BSD >>> licensing it if you find it useful. See: >>> http://www.4front-tech.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=296 >> >> >> >> Since those apps which use ALSA most likely will be part of the ports >> collection but not of the base system, I think this isn't really >> needed to >> be adopted by us. SALSA can just be part of the ports collection too. >> > > Actually,having an enabling API that is tied to the OS like SALSA seems > to be is a very good thing to have in the base system. Why drive the > ports team nuts with it breaking at the drop of a hat every time someone > tweaks the kernel sources? > > I'm highly in favor of enabling technologies like this. It makes > everyone's lives easier. > > Scott Hi Scott, The reason we had to design SALSA is that the Linux distros started shipping ESD/KMIX/Gnome-volume-control only compiled with ALSA support. This doesn't affect FreeBSD because compiling these apps on FreeBSD correctly picks up the OSS API. Anyway, the source is available for SALSA (based on ALSA 1.0.7) and it's probably already incompatible with ALSA 1.0.9 released a couple of days ago. 4Front doesn't have the bandwidth to keep tracking ALSA every day of the week to see what changed (we got hopelessly out of sync in just one week when we tried developing a shim module - see the cuckoo project at: http://www.opensound.com/cuckoo.html There will be some changes needed in the freebsd drivers for the SALSA libs to work and don't worry it's nothing too difficult - mainly just some bookeeping functions. Best regards Dev Mazumdar ----------------------------------------------------------- 4Front Technologies 4035 Lafayette Place, Unit F, Culver City, CA 90232, USA. Tel: (310) 202 8530 URL: www.opensound.com Fax: (310) 202 0496 Email: info@opensound.com -----------------------------------------------------------