On Tue, 2016-11-08 at 15:39 +0100, Takashi Iwai wrote:
The simple mixer is another layer in ALSA mixer API, and actually it's mandatory. So, at least, sbase plugin should be provided always when alsa-lib mixer API is used. Other plugins are basically never used practically.
It doesn't matter whether to package them separately or not. The only point is that sbase plugin should be available when alsa-lib mixer API is used.
Thanks for the explanation! If the sbase plugin is essentially a mandatory accompaniment of libasound, I'll move it to the libasound package, and since I don't see much benefit in keeping the hda and ac97 plugins in a separate package either, I'll move those too and get rid of the whole smixer plugin package.
Out of curiosity, in what situation are the hda and ac97 plugins used? You said that they are practically never used, but surely they have some purpose?