[alsa-devel] seq module loading issue

[Takashi Iwai]

At Thu, 09 Oct 2014 09:29:10 +0200,
Clemens Ladisch wrote:
> 
> Takashi Iwai wrote:
> > Adam Goode wrote:
> >> 3. Do away with deferred module loading in seq. This is pretty invasive and
> >> would increase the number of modules loaded, but would result in a lot of
> >> deleted code in the kernel and a clean fix.
> 
> I've always wanted to do this (but this was very low priority while this
> bug was not known).  The original purpose of the separate seq devices
> was to save memory for people who want to only play MP3 files, but this
> justification became meaningless long ago for desktop computers, and
> embedded systems that care about memory could just disable the
> sequencer.
> 
> >> Number 3 is my preferred solution, but I wanted to see if these sorts of
> >> patches would be acceptable, since it is invasive and would result in more
> >> modules loaded.
> >
> > I don't like that option, it's too risky at this stage.
> 
> "This stage" = "for 3.18"?
>
> > If it were a simple cleanup, I'm fine with it.  But this leads to
> > a major behavior change, which has a high risk of incompatibility.
> 
> But there would be no changed behaviour as far as the API is concerned
> (except for this particular issue, which is a bug).

Currently, the sequencer stuff can be suppressed by simply not loading
snd-seq core module itself.  Do you mean to drop this feature?
Some distros don't load sequencer modules nowadays as default.  So it
would result in a clear behavior change on the whole system.


Takashi