[alsa-devel] Support for getting "manufacturer" from snd_seq_client_info and/or snd_ctl_card_info

[Adam Goode]

On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 8:00 AM, Takashi Iwai <tiwai at suse.de> wrote:
>
> At Tue, 13 May 2014 11:24:40 +0200,
> Clemens Ladisch wrote:
> >
> > Adam Goode wrote:
> > > On Sun, May 11, 2014 at 12:50 AM, Clemens Ladisch <clemens at ladisch.de> wrote:
> > > > Adam Goode wrote:
> > > > > I am working on a seq implementation for Chrome, to replace the rawmidi
> > > > > implementation. I can retain the manufacturer extraction hack on the card,
> > > > > but seq requires yet another hack to guess the card for a particular seq
> > > > > client.
> > > > >
> > > > > A completely different solution would be to add all this info to sysfs
> > >
> > > > USB devices already have this information in sysfs.
> > >
> > > This is true. Unfortunately, here are the current steps to get this
> > > information:
> > > 1. Given a seq client, attempt to guess the card by making assumptions
> > >    about client->card numbering.
> > > 2. From the card, attempt to guess the manufacturer by making
> > >    assumptions about how longname is constructed. Or, attempt to
> > >    extract the usb information from the card info struct and then try
> > >    to get the info from /sys (but this gives us only the manufacturer
> > >    string from usb, not the quirk vendor name that the usb midi driver
> > >    knows about).
> > >
> > > What I would like to do is make these mappings explicit. Because Alsa
> > > is very ioctl driven, I was thinking the way to do this is through the
> > > existing ioctl API. But since I really just want to expose a lot more
> > > read-only info about the system, perhaps files in /sys would be an
> > > acceptable way to expose this information.
> >
> > The ioctl API (and the library API on top of it) already exists.  Why
> > do you want to introduce another kind of API that cannot be used for
> > virtual devices?
> >
> > > At least, I would like to take the rather detailed information stored
> > > in /prod/asound and expose this in a more sysfs way via /sys, then add
> > > more fields and info. Does this sound reasonable?
> >
> > Almost all the information in /proc/asound is already available through
> > some ioctl, and the missing information can be added easily.
> >
> >
> > OK, here is my proposal:
> >
> > 1. Add the card number to snd_seq_client_info.  (For kernel drivers;
> >    user clients might have the PID here while we're at it.)
> >
> >    (As long as you are interested only in USB devices, this might be all
> >    you need.)
> >
> > 2. Add the manufacturer name to snd_ctl_card_info.  For USB devices,
> >    this is almost always known, but most other drivers do not know the
> >    name of the card manufacturer (as opposed to the chip manufacturer).
> >    In those cases, the most informative name that a driver could provide
> >    would be based on a registered ID like "USB:0x1234", "PCI:0x5678", or
> >    "IEEE:0x9abcde".  (It's possible to look these up in usb.ids, pci.ids,
> >    and oui.txt, but I'm not sure if it would be a good idea to let
> >    alsa-lib do this lookup.)
>
> This sounds good to me.  It's small enough and least impact to the
> existing API.
>
> I'm not opposing to creating /sys entries, though.  But, if we do
> exposing to /sys, this has to be done properly.  Namely, the question
> isn't only about the sequencer stuff but about all entries in /proc.
> So, this won't be a quick task, in anyway.
>
>

Thanks for spending time on this. I like this proposal very much. I
plan to look at sending some patches in the next week or so for
review.

One question I have for step 2 above: snd_ctl_card_info is full. I
don't see a way of adding to it without introducing a new ioctl
(SNDRV_CTL_IOCTL_CARD_INFO2 + struct snd_ctl_card_info2?)

I am happy to do this, just wanted to make sure it was the right way.
(alsa-lib should hide this change through its accessors I believe.)

Thanks,

Adam