ALSA, OSS and the pointless of switching to Pulse [Was: Paris summit]

[Lee Revell]

On Mon, 2006-06-26 at 17:18 +0100, Paul Sladen wrote:
> On Mon, 26 Jun 2006, Lee Revell wrote:
> > On Mon, 2006-06-26 at 13:23 +0100, Paul Sladen wrote:
> > > Multiple-open OSS to an ALSA backend needs writing
> > > 
> > >   ALSA: Great ultra low-level hardware-interface. 
> > 
> > Attached is the minimal ALSA program to play back audio.  It's 51 lines
> 
> I think you may have just proved your own point, "QED" as they say!  ;-)
> The following is the minimum to play back audio with OSS:
> 
>   $ cat file > /dev/dsp
> 

"cat file > /dev/dsp" does not set the sample rate, audio format, number
of channels, etc.  It only works for 8000Hz 8 bit mono IIRC.  To do
anything useful with OSS you need to use ioctl()s to set these
parameters.

"cat file > /dev/dsp" is a toy, a neat trick, but not useful for
anything serious.

A C implementation of an OSS app that does the same as the ALSA program
I posted would be about the same length. 

> > I suspect that many of the ALSA bashers have not even looked at it
> > lately.
> 
> It's not so much the 'bashing', each of us has our own opinions on the
> strengths of ALSA.  Whereas the reality is that programs out there use
> OSS;  and therefore it is our job to figure our how to make it 'just work'.
> 
> If it does not 'just work', then it's a bug on our part.

That's true, up to a point, but I disagree that we should work around
every bug, prejudice, or design flaw in every application.  Sometimes
the only answer is "fix your app".

Lee