[alsa-devel] Rationale behind snd_pcm_htimestamp()

[Lennart Poettering]

On Mon, 16.02.09 17:08, Takashi Iwai (tiwai at suse.de) wrote:

> > An alternative way seemed to be to go via the snd_pcm_status
> > structure. However querying that seems not to sync the hw index
> > data. Hmm... so let's call snd_pcm_hwsync() right before querying the
> > struct -- as it turns out however, that function is now deprecated. So
> > which function should I call? The doxygen comments of _hwsync() kind
> > of suggest in a way to call snd_pcm_avail_update(), whose doxygen
> > comments however declare that it does in fact *not* sync the hw state
> > either, but suggest to use snd_pcm_avail() for that.
> > 
> > Ok, so I am now tempted to first call snd_pcm_avail() and then
> > snd_pcm_status() and have all three values atomically. But unfortunately
> > that's not the case. Again the avail value of the two calls differs sometimes.
> > 
> > How can I query the three values atomically? Can i do that at all?
> 
> Hmm, there is no way to get them in atomic way anyway, I guess.
> Even in *_avail_delay(),  basically each of them is called
> sequentially in alsa-lib code.
> 
> But, I wonder whether calling snd_pcm_delay() then
> snd_pcm_htimestamp() doesn't work?  snd_pcm_avail_delay() is nothing
> but a sequential call of snd_pcm_delay() and avail_update().  And,
> htimestamp is avail_update() and timestamp check.
> 
> Well, *_htimestamp() has a loop to sync with avail, so the similar
> logic could be used to sync all of them...

Hmm, so I understood you correctly then the API would need changing to
get the timestamp, the delay and the avail value that belong together?
That's unfortunate.

Why doesn't calling _avail() and then _status() do what I want?

Lennart

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Lennart Poettering                        Red Hat, Inc.
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