At 4:28 PM +0100 1/28/13, Takashi Iwai wrote:
At Fri, 25 Jan 2013 10:10:18 -0500, Daniel Griscom wrote:
I never got a response to my query,
... because you're hanging your post to an utterly irrelevant thread? It's the second time, so I guess the previous time wasn't an accident.
Are there hidden email headers that maintain threads independent of the subject line? If so then my apologies: my (antique) email client has been hiding them from me.
not even an RTFM (although I'm pretty sure this isn't in the M). So, in case anyone else is wondering, here's what I've since found:
- The kernel packages do NOT limit themselves to taking an entire
released ALSA package. In particular, the 3.6.X series has a number of improvements and changes that aren't in the latest (year old) alsa-driver 1.0.25 package. I'll guess that they're taken directly from the alsa GIT repository, but it's hard to know.
The 1.0.25 *released* tarball is what was released. It won't change. The tarball created from the latest GIT is called "snapshot".
And note that the alsa-driver version number has been already deprecated in the recent kernel. The confusing number 1.0.25 was dropped, finally.
In short, forget about alsa-driver released packages. Stick with the driver included in your kernel, or use alsa-driver snapshot tarball (but carefully).
Well, that's good to know. How do you refer to ALSA release versions now? Just by the kernel version that the various file versions are included into?
- The alsa-driver package installs items that are NOT a part of the
kernel package. The alsasound startup script and the ALSA headers are the examples I've found so far, but there may be more items.
They are no longer necessary stuff, but kept there since they are mostly harmless. You can run "make install-modules" to install only modules.
But, I don't want to just install the alsa-driver-1.0.25 modules if more recent ones are included in the kernel distributions; I only need whatever's in alsa-driver that is NOT in the kernel distributions, for example:
- Is /etc/init.d/alsasound not needed? It seems to do a number of things on startup/shutdown.
- How can I independently install the ALSA headers: "make headers-install" inside alsa-driver-1.0.25?
And, are there any other components that alsa-driver installs that are NOT included in the kernel distributions?
- When installed, the alsa-driver package installs its modules into
the currently running kernel's directories. So, if you want to have the latest system, you need to install the kernel, reboot into that kernel, install alsa-driver, reinstall the kernel, and reboot again. Ugh.
Hm, did you read INSTALL file? The installation to an update (or extra) directory is suggested. Pass a proper --with-moddir configure option.
I missed that: thanks.
Reading the INSTALL doc on that option, it mentions using a relative path to put the installed modules in a subdirectory so as to preserve the existing versions: why would I want to do that?
<rant> ALSA's Achilles heel has always been its documentation, whether for developers (the Doxygen-generated documents are at times comically uninformative) or for end-users (e.g. the lack of information such as the above). Please: those of you in the know, spend some time documenting this powerful and confusing system. Yes, you know how to use it, but isn't the goal to have it support the thousands/millions of audio users out there, and not just the dozen or so core ALSA developers? </rant>
You seem to overestimate the numbers. I dream of dozen of core developers, too.
I hear you. But, that makes it even more important that the documentation be as complete as possible, so that a) you few developers don't get pestered by we not-yet-in-the-know users, and b) the knowledge you each have built up over the years isn't lost when one of you moves on to other projects.
Speaking of implicit feedback: it's been since 3.5, but lots of bug fixes are found in 3.7. So better to use 3.7, I guess.
That's good information.
HTH,
Takashi
It most definitely does. Thank you.
Dan
P.S. And, I'll make sure to start a new thread next time.