[alsa-devel] Problems with maintaining a separate alsa-driver in a distribution

[Ozan Çağlayan]

Takashi Iwai wrote:
>
> It's fairly difficult because the internal API was changed.
> Especially the core struct was modified recently, thus there is no
> ABI compatibility at all between the older kernel and the latest alsa
> driver.
>
>   
>> Is it technically possible to patch those tiny drivers onto
>> alsa-driver and compile them if the .config file from the kernel source
>> has enabled those DVB devices?
>>
>> Or maybe I should enable ALSA in-kernel, compile those DVB sound stuff
>> and remove the sound/ directory from the kernel package? (Even the idea
>> sounds really *dirty*, dunno if it's technically possible too)
>>     
>
> You'd need to copy the original ALSA in-kernel stuff, copy the headers
> from alsa-driver, then rebuild the related modules in kernel to follow
> the new API.  Also, some wrappers would be needed, e.g. for the
> obsoleted snd_card_new().
>   

But that shouldn't pose any problem if I stick with 2.6.30_rc* + latest
alsa-driver right? But yes, during the lifetime of a stable distribution
release, the separate alsa-driver will always move faster than the
kernel and the ABI changes will be inevitable.

So It will become difficult enough when the stock kernel of the distro
and alsa-driver diverges from each other, am I right?

Thanks,