[alsa-devel] Standard config and plugin paths

[Takashi Iwai]

Hi,

while working on openSUSE 10.3 ALSA packaging, I had a discussion
regarding the config and plugin paths.
Basically, the current configs (typically in /usr/share/alsa or
/etc/alsa) and binary plugins (/usr/lib/alsa-lib) are fairly strictly
bound to the specific library, libasound.so.2.
That is, if we publish a newer, incompatible version, libasound.so.3,
these files will be very unlikely unusable, too.

The suggestion was that we should keep these config and plugin files
in the version-dependent paths so that no conflictions would occur at
update.  For example, instead of /usr/share/alsa, /usr/share/alsa2 or
whatever.

The fix would be easy -- just add some options to configure script of
alsa-lib and alsa-plugins.  So, the question is what path names are
most suitable as the standard.

For example, I find the following OK:

- $DATADIR/alsa-1.0/
- $LIBDIR/alsa-lib-1.0/

Or, the deeper paths:

- $DATADIR/alsa/1.0/
- $LIBDIR/alsa-lib/1.0/


For keeping the backward compatibility, we may implement fallback to
read the old default path in addition, if the new path doesn't exist.
In that case, the former suggestion would be cleaner.


Any comments or suggestions?


Takashi