[alsa-devel] ALSA: hda: hdmi: Hint matching between input devices and pcm devices

[Stephen Warren]

David Henningsson wrote at Thursday, August 25, 2011 1:14 AM:
> On 08/24/2011 11:21 PM, Stephen Warren wrote:
> > David Henningsson wrote at Tuesday, August 23, 2011 10:54 PM:
> >> On 2011-08-23 17:51, Stephen Warren wrote:
> >>> David Henningsson wrote at Tuesday, August 23, 2011 9:12 AM:
> >>>> Since modern HDMI cards often have more than one output pin and thus
> >>>> input device, we need to know which one has actually been plugged in.
> >>>>
> >>>> This patch adds a name hint that indicates which PCM device is connected
> >>>> to which pin.
...
> >>> Structurally, I think this looks OK. The only question I have is the
> >>> string format:
> >>>
> >>> "HDMI/DP (pcm %d)", pcmdev
...
> >>> Thinking about ALSA device numbering, it's
> >>> like "hw:1,3", so includes the card number too; should that be in the
> >>> string?
> >>
> >> The matchup against the card can be done both in sysfs, and using the
> >> card name, which is later prefixed to that string. The end result would
> >> be something like "HDA NVidia HDMI/DP (pcm 3)"
> >
> > OK, so if the string that user-space sees already has the card name, that's
> > probably enough in practice, although it still seems a little free-form.
> >
> > One issue with the above string: There's no delimiter that user-space can
> > use to extract just the card name from the whole string. Perhaps add a
> > ":" at the start so there's a delimiter?
> 
> Or a ","

Sure.

> > "HDA NVidia: HDMI/DP (pcm 3)"
> > "HDA NVidia: pcm 3"
> >
> > ?
> >
> >> It's possible though, and somewhat simpler than matching against sysfs
> >> to add the card number as well.
> >>
> >>> * Would it be better to make the string completely generic - i.e. not
> >>> include "HDMI/DP", but rather something like "ALSA PCM %d", or even
> >>> "ALSA PCM hw:%d,%d" so that the same format could be used for non-HDMI/
> >>> DP PCMs in the future?
> >>
> >> That would probably be bad, as there would be no way to distinguish
> >> between e g "Headphone" and "Headphone 2".
> >
> > Are those two different analog outputs from the same PCM device?
> 
> Yes.
> 
> > If so, I don't see a problem with having both those jack's input devices
> > reporting the same PCM name; user-space will just see 2 matches and know
> > that the PCM device is useful if either is plugged in.
> 
> The problem is not that they have the same name, the problem is with
> removing "HDMI/DP",

Ah, OK. That makes sense now.

...
> The jack input devices solve two different problems for HDMI and analog:
> 
> For HDMI, my problem is that I don't know which PCM device to send the
> output to (because there are four). The jack input device, with the
> patch, fixes that problem.
> 
> For Analog output, my problem is that I don't know which volume controls
> are affecting the current output path. If the Headphone is plugged in,
> this might be "Master" and "Headphone" whereas if it is unplugged, it
> might be "Master" and "Speaker" instead.
>
> In theory, analog outputs could show up at both devices 0,2,4 and 5, but
> in practice, all of them always [1] show up at PCM device 0.

OK. I think those are just two aspects of the same thing; we always need to
know which PCM to use and which controls to use; it's just that in practice
sometimes that information is also implied by other means.

So, I don't think a fully general solution hurts.

> >> Up to now, I believe the string in the name has been pretty arbitrarily.
> >> E g, I have "Headphone" on one machine and "HP Out" on another. Should
> >> we try to establish a format where various parameters can be added, it
> >> might be good to try something like ",name=value". Should we add card as
> >> well, the result would be e g: "HDA NVidia HDMI/DP,card=2,pcm=3"
> >
> > That sounds pretty sane to me.
> 
> Ok, I'm attaching a patch where the only difference is that the format
> has changed according to the ,name=value syntax.

Just one question: If the core code prefixes the card name onto this string,
the HDMI code will pass in "HDMI/DP,pcm=3" and the core code will join the 
prefix on the front using a space, yielding "HDA NVidia HDMI/DP,pcm=3". Can
we make the joining use a comma so that spaces within fields don't confuse
the comma, i.e. "HDA NVidia,HDMI/DP,pcm=3"? Otherwise, does the card name
end at the first space, the second, the last? (None of these work in all
the cases considering that the second field might be "Headphones 2" with a
space in it.

-- 
nvpublic