[alsa-devel] Jack event API - decision needed

[David Henningsson]

On 2011-06-21 01:40, Mark Brown wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 08:53:46PM +0200, David Henningsson wrote:
>> On 2011-06-20 19:07, Mark Brown wrote:
>>> On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 03:37:25PM +0200, David Henningsson wrote:
>
>>> Looking at the patch the main thing that jumps out at me without
>>> any knowledge of the udev code is that the patch will end up classifying
>>> video output jacks as audio even if they've no audio capability which is
>>> obviously not correct.
>
>> In suggested implementation, they will only be marked audio jacks if
>> their parent object is a sound card.
>
> Oh, then in that case we've got another issue in that jacks that happen
> not to be associated directly with a sound card for some reason (they're
> implemented by the embedded controller and exposed via ACPI for example)
> won't be made available to applications.

Which is not a problem IMO, because in the desktop world this does not 
happen (or at least I've never seen it), and in the embedded world you 
have PA running as root anyway.

>>> I still don't entirely understand the technical issue you're trying to
>>> address here - this doesn't seem specific to audio.
>
>> I think this is a difference between embedded space and desktop
>> space. In embedded space, a hardware designer can decide to connect
>> the "take a camera picture" button to "line in jack detect" just
>> because that saves him an extra GPIO chip (and "line in" isn't
>> connected anyway). Those things don't happen on normal PC [1], but
>> instead, things must be auto-detectable.
>
> I'm sorry but I'm not sure I follow the connection between the text
> you've written above and the point made in the text you're quoting.  The
> physical implementation of the hardware doesn't seem strongly related to
> how Linux distributions manage permissions for the interfaces exposed by
> the drivers that manage that hardware.
>
> If you're talking about the support for buttons that's nothing to do
> with wiring random unrelated controls to jack detection circuits (which
> would be highly unusual as pretty much any detection specific
> electronics are highly specialised and difficult to use for anything
> else).  It's there because most headsets have at least one button on
> them, implemented by shorting the mic to ground and used for
> play/pause/call functionality, and some have more complex arrangements.
> I've got a laptop sitting on this table which implements such
> functionality.

> As far as the implementation stuff goes you do get all sorts of odd
> stuff on PCs, anything you've done that involves ACPI interaction (like
> the Thinkpad extra volume control that was being discussed recently) is
> going to be that sort of oddity.

If you ask me, I think the Thinkpad stuff should be implemented with 
connections between the hda-intel and thinkpad-acpi driver inside the 
kernel, and we can leave userspace out of it - userspace would just see 
the hda-intel card, possibly with an extra mute or volume control. But 
that's another story.

>>> only aren't working correctly in at least this case.  It feels like if
>>> we understood why the heuristics are making a bad call here we might be
>>> able to come up with a better solution.
>
>> AFAICT, the current "heuristics", is to assign all input devices to
>> root and root only.
>
> OK, well that doesn't seem like an immediately obvious choice.  I can
> imagine there might be some concern around keyboards due to passwords
> but in general it doesn't seem obvious that the console user shouldn't
> be able to read physical input devices on the box (which is the case
> we're trying to implement here; we don't need write support).  Do all
> classes of input device currently have some root only service to mediate
> access to them, and if that is the model we're using perhaps it'd make
> sense to have one for this with a dbus interface or whatever that
> PulseAudio can talk do rather than to have it talking direct to the
> device?

If I look at what /dev/input devices I have here, that's keyboard, 
mouse, and ACPI buttons (power, lid close etc). AFAIK, all of those go 
through the X input layer. Play/pause keys should go through there as 
well, but are you saying that audio jack events should also go through 
the X input layer?

If you are, you're welcome to try to fit it in the 248 keycodes that are 
already occupied, design a new X input extension, or whatever is the 
right solution for that. I don't know myself.

If you're not, then that's why this is specific to audio.

>>>> For options 2a) and 2b) I guess the existing /dev/input thing should
>>>> be deprecated and/or removed. So part of decision should maybe be
>>>> based on information about how widespread the usage of these devices
>>>> are currently...?
>
>>> There's a reasonable amount of usage in the embedded space.
>
>> But maintaining two different implementations of input jacks without
>> at least strongly deprecating one of them, lead to application
>> programmers being confused, kernel being big and bloated, and so
>> on...
> "But"?

Do you agree that maintaining two different implementations of input 
jacks is something we should avoid?

-- 
David Henningsson, Canonical Ltd.
http://launchpad.net/~diwic