The SOF (Sound Open Firmware) tree contains a lot of references in topology files to 'codec_slave'/'codec_master' terms, which in turn come from alsa-lib and ALSA/ASoC topology support at the kernel level. These terms are no longer compatible with the guidelines adopted by the kernel community [1] and need to change in backwards-compatible ways.
The main/secondary terms typically suggested in guidelines don't mean anything for clocks, this patchset suggests instead the use of 'provider' and 'consumer' terms, with the 'codec' prefix kept to make it clear that the codec is the reference. The CM/CS suffixes are also replaced by CP/CC.
It can be argued that the change of suffix is invasive, but finding a replacement that keeps the M and S shortcuts has proven difficult in quite a few contexts.
The previous definitions are kept for backwards-compatibility so this change should not have any functional impact. It is suggested that new contributions only use the new terms but there is no requirement to transition immediately to the new definitions for existing code. Intel will however update all its past contributions related to bit clock/frame sync configurations immediately.
This suggestion is easier to review first at the alsa-lib level, and if agreed follow-up contributions for the Linux kernel [2] and SOF firmware [3] will be provided.
It's OK from alsa-lib POV; although the uapi header change isn't 100% safe, the user of this header is really our ones, so it's practically acceptable, I suppose.
Could you submit the changes for kernel, so that it can be merged in time? Basically alsa-lib is synced with kernel, so the kernel should be changed at first.
Ack, will do, thanks for the review.