[PATCH 3/9] conf: Read a host-specific asoundrc

[Mark Hills]

On Tue, 23 Jun 2020, Takashi Iwai wrote:

> On Tue, 23 Jun 2020 13:18:49 +0200,
> Mark Hills wrote:
> > 
> > On Tue, 23 Jun 2020, Takashi Iwai wrote:
> > 
> > > On Mon, 22 Jun 2020 15:15:09 +0200,
> > > Mark Hills wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > On systems with a network mounted home directory this is thoroughly
> > > > useful to allow for a core set of asoundrc settings, but with different
> > > > settings on different hosts.
> > > > 
> > > > It's not possibly to implement this in our own asoundrc or local
> > > > customisation, as it's too late. The installation file must be modified.
> > > > 
> > > > This is similar to ~/.Xdefaults-* on some systems.
> > > > 
> > > > Signed-off-by: Mark Hills <mark at xwax.org>
> > > 
> > > This kind of change popping up sometimes in the past, too, and I have
> > > a mixed feeling whether to take such a change globally or not.
> > > 
> > > In one side, it can work, but OTOH, if you can deal with that detail,
> > > you're certainly able to set up the environment variable easily, too.
> > 
> > I'm happy for a concern to be raised.
> > 
> > Can you clarify, which environment variable?
> > 
> > I wasn't aware it was possible to override asoundrc with an environment 
> > variable, until I looked up just now and found ALSA_CONFIG_PATH in the 
> > code.
> 
> Hrm, you're right, I thought we had a simple override, but it doesn't
> look so.
> 
> OK, then it makes sense to take your patch.  Or rather better to allow
> an own environment variable (e.g. $ASOUNDRC) instead?  It's more
> flexible.

Why not let me experiment, I'll check ALSA_CONFIG_PATH, and then see what 
patch I can come up with, at least for my own use case.

Something like $ASOUNDRC will depend on whether we want it to augment, or 
fully replace the configuration.

I did do some experiments some time ago with fully replacing ALSA 
configuration; I find the defaults (eg. "Surround speakers" etc.) to be 
not a good match for my setup. I found it quite difficult to reason about 
the variable-driven design of the default asoundrc files and for me it 
seemed to cause more problems that it was solving. But then I think I 
discovered I could hack it with 'namehint' and moved on.

But in general something which allows policy to be passed to shell profile 
scripts is often not a bad thing.

-- 
Mark