[alsa-devel] [RFC, alsa-utils] RFC: alsamixer: Improve description of playback switches

[Takashi Sakamoto]

Hi,

On Mar 27 2018 06:13, Kirill Marinushkin wrote:
> On 03/26/18 22:41, Andrew Chant wrote:
>> On Mon, Mar 26, 2018 at 11:32 AM, Kirill Marinushkin
>> <k.marinushkin at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I faced 2 problems:
>>>
>>> * the clock source validity was displayed as [O]. I thought it is a zero, which is the opposite from the real state
>>> * I couldn't find how to turn the processing feature on. The help doesn't say anything about it
>> A recent patch of mine changed clock source validity from a mixer to a
>> global control, so it should no longer show up in alsamixer.
> 
> Hello Andrew,
> 
> Nice! One of the problems is solved. However, the second problem is still actual.
> As you had a recent experience with alsamixer, what is your opinion?

I think Kirill mentions a patch to change the type of 'iface' for such 
control elements to 'SNDRV_CTL_ELEM_IFACE_CARD' or 
'SNDRV_CTL_ELEM_IFACE_PCM', but I cannot find such patches in Iwai-san's 
tree[1]. I guess they're not merged yet.

In my humble opinion, if so, Kirill's patch is not better in a view of 
compatibility, because such smixer controls suddenly disappear via 
alsa-lib's mixer APIs when the patched kernel is released. In a point of 
backward compatibility, this kind of change should be avoided, as 
possible (of cource, depending on the cases).


[1] 
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tiwai/sound.git/log/?h=for-next


Regards

Takashi Sakamoto