[alsa-devel] How to package the smixer modules?

[Tanu Kaskinen]

On Mon, 2016-11-14 at 11:38 +0100, Takashi Iwai wrote:
> On Wed, 09 Nov 2016 15:39:26 +0100,
> Tanu Kaskinen wrote:
> > 
> > On Tue, 2016-11-08 at 15:39 +0100, Takashi Iwai wrote:
> > > The simple mixer is another layer in ALSA mixer API, and actually it's
> > > mandatory.  So, at least, sbase plugin should be provided always when
> > > alsa-lib mixer API is used.  Other plugins are basically never used
> > > practically.
> > > 
> > > It doesn't matter whether to package them separately or not.  The only
> > > point is that sbase plugin should be available when alsa-lib mixer API
> > > is used.
> > 
> > Thanks for the explanation! If the sbase plugin is essentially a
> > mandatory accompaniment of libasound, I'll move it to the libasound
> > package, and since I don't see much benefit in keeping the hda and ac97
> > plugins in a separate package either, I'll move those too and get rid
> > of the whole smixer plugin package.
> > 
> > Out of curiosity, in what situation are the hda and ac97 plugins used?
> > You said that they are practically never used, but surely they have
> > some purpose?
> 
> Actually, I was wrong.  Even sbase.so isn't needed for the normal
> alsamixer / amixer operations.  This is a base shared object that is
> needed for "basic" abstraction mode, but the normal mode (abstraction
> "none") doesn't need it.
> 
> That said, the whole /usr/lib*/alsa-lib/smixer/* stuff can be removed
> from your package as long as the normal mode is used.
> 
> There is an option -a to pass the abstraction level.  When you pass
> "basic", the python module gets loaded.  It was supposed to handle the
> card-specific abstraction parsed via python, but this seems currently
> broken.  So it's maybe safer to disable as default...

Ok, thanks for the update! I see you submitted a patch that disables
these plugins if Python is disabled. OpenEmbedded builds alsa-lib
without Python support, so I guess these plugins won't be available to
OpenEmbedded users starting from alsa-lib 1.1.3. For now there's
nothing I need to change in the packaging.

-- 
Tanu

https://www.patreon.com/tanuk