Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2005 11:17:43 -0600 From: "Conrad J. Sabatier" <conrads@cox.net> To: Mathew Kanner <mat@cnd.mcgill.ca> Cc: multimedia@freebsd.org Subject: Re: audio code maintainers, A call to arms Message-ID: <20050117111743.3a24ed78@dolphin.local.net> In-Reply-To: <20050115180942.GA12541@cnd.mcgill.ca> References: <41E583BD.5080900@elischer.org> <20050115180942.GA12541@cnd.mcgill.ca>
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On Sat, 15 Jan 2005 13:09:42 -0500, Mathew Kanner <mat@cnd.mcgill.ca> wrote: > On Jan 12, Julian Elischer wrote: > > Firstly, Who is curently maintaining it? > > Orion Hodson seems to have become scarce. > > (If you are reading this Orion and I've just missed you, sorry). > > I saw cg (Cameron Grant) on the lists the other day, but I > > am not sure who is currently the contact man for sound. > > let me know if you know :-) > > If you want the job, speak up :-) > > The there is MIDI... > > > > Kazuhito HONDA (kazuhito@ph.noda.tus.ac.jp) > > has been doing some work on the USB audio code > > and has agreed to act as contact/maintainer for that as > > it seems to be currently unloved. > > Hi Julian, > First, I guess I owe an apology to the list and to freebsd in > general for dragging my feet on MIDI. The stunning silence is > incredibly demotivating to me. Over the many months think I've had > one positive response to my work (it works!) and one negative (does > not compile for non-i386, printf qualifiers). The latter would be me. :-) I'm really sorry I never followed through any further on trying to correct the problems on amd64; it's just that my initial review of the code sort of left me a little bewildered. :-) When you told me it was just a problem with some printf() statements, I thought, "OK, that should be simple enough", but when I looked at it and saw all these macros and stuff, I was lost. I didn't want to be a pain in the butt and ask you to explain everything that was going on there, but I never did make a really serious, concerted effort to figure it out on my own, either. Thus, my ensuing silence on the matter. :-) > I never expected to be > in a vacuum. Then again, I'm one of those sensitive types. I can't say as I blame you; it's always nice to feel that one's work is actually being used and appreciated. > I'm committed to getting this done, it basically works, but I > need to be kicked around when I start loosing momentum. I'm very much the same way; I think it's a part of my "Gemini" nature. :-) I tend to approach new projects with a great burst of enthusiasm initially, then I start to lose interest once it starts to become "easy". :-) > But MIDI isn't FreeBSD problem. We've been stagnant in sound > infrastructure, both in the human and software sense. Other projects > have continued along without us. We don't have anybody that really > understands the sound infrastructure, esp given that locking was an > after thought that makes things infinitely more complex. > > (BTW, Orion gave up his commit bit about a year ago, due to an > increase in demand on his time, a baby) > > To me, the worse aspect is that new people are scared off > either by the perceived complexity issues or general unwillingness of > the powers that be to accept a new direction. Indeed! I would be delighted to help out with the maintenence of the sound system, but unfortunately, even though I consider myself a fairly competent C coder, working at the kernel/driver level is something totally foreign to me so far. I've just been skeptical as to whether anyone would want to give me the necessary hand-holding at first until I could get a decent grasp on things. > To move forward we need to: > > - Get a new sound team. I don't know how to go about this, maybe a > general call to arms, or an appointment from core or maybe a > guillotine backed revolution. > > - Set a list of priorities and start working on them. I see the major > TODO items: > > - Review this list > - Figure out which PR are still applicable, close the rest. > - Move forward with features, other projects have far surpassed us. > To me the most glaring difference is that we are stuck with a > simplistic view of "Mixers" and cannot export the sophisticated > controls that present days devices contain. NetBSD, ALSA, that > commercial project have all taken this on. We could embellish or > just plain drop our mixer support while keeping what was good from > newpcm2 > - Or, just port the NetBSD sound infrastructure. Sometimes, when > I'm depressed, I look into the feasibility of this. > > > So there it is. How wants to be part of freebsd sound? Many > open positions, but the pay sucks. > > --Mat Not to mention it's a thankless job as well (for the most part). :-) -- Conrad J. Sabatier <conrads@cox.net> -- "In Unix veritas"
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