Re: libcanberra as an external dependency

[Joe Marcus Clarke <marcus freebsd org>]

Lennart Poettering wrote:
> On Thu, 07.08.08 18:12, Mathias Hasselmann (mathias hasselmann gmx de) wrote:
>
> > Am Donnerstag, den 07.08.2008, 11:59 -0400 schrieb Joe Marcus Clarke:
> > > It seems to me there is a fundamental problem with adding libcanberra as 
> > > an external dependency.  It currently only supports ALSA and pulseaudio 
> > > audio output.  However, the default sounds daemon for GNOME is still 
> > > esound.  The BSDs and Solaris do not support ALSA, so this leaves them a 
> > > tough choice for sound events.  Pulseaudio replaces esd, but it is not a 
> > > blessed GNOME dependency.
> > >
> > > I think libcanberra must have an esd output plug-in at the very least 
> > > (i.e. if not also OSS and Sun Audio) in order to be a viable external 
> > > dependency.  This would go a long way to helping non-Linux platforms 
> > > achieve working sound theme support using all blessed GNOME dependencies.
> > AFAIK an EDS backend would be quite pointless considering the latency
> > this adds. What about directly adding OSS and Sun Audio backends? AFAIK
> > Lennart designed Pulseaudio to support different backends.
>
> I wouldn't be concerned so much about latency.
>
> libcanberra supports different backends, as does PulseAudio.
>
> I added support for pluggable backends precisely to avoid discussions
> like this one: if someone wants to use libcanberra on his exotic OS,
> he's welcome to do so, all he needs to do is write a backend. In the
> ALSA driver he has a good template.

While esd may be considered old, it's not exotic.  It is THE sound 
server for GNOME right now.

Joe

--
Joe Marcus Clarke
FreeBSD GNOME Team	::	gnome FreeBSD org
FreeNode / #freebsd-gnome
http://www.FreeBSD.org/gnome