[LAA] [ANN] Ecasound 2.6.0 released

[Kai Vehmanen]

Hello all,

Ecasound 2.6.0 has been released! Releases notes follow:

1. Summary of changes
---------------------

New interactive commands have been added to query and manage JACK port 
connections. More options are also now available for setting up ecasound's 
own JACK ports. Severe bugs in 'playat' and 'select' objects have been 
fixed. A refactored ECI C implementation fixes bugs and provides improved 
performance for ECI apps. Many minor bugs have been fixed.

2. What is Ecasound?
--------------------

Ecasound is a software package designed for multitrack audio processing. 
It can be used for simple tasks like audio playback, recording and format 
conversions, as well as for multitrack effect processing, mixing, 
recording and signal recycling. Ecasound supports a wide range of audio 
inputs, outputs and effect algorithms. Effects and audio objects can be 
combined in various ways, and their parameters can be controlled by 
operator objects like oscillators and MIDI-CCs. A versatile console mode 
user-interface is included in the package.

Primary platform for running Ecasound is GNU/Linux. Ecasound can also be 
run on many UNIX-derived systems such as FreeBSD, Mac OS X and Solaris. 
Limited support for Windows is available through Cygwin. Ecasound is 
licensed under the GPL. The Ecasound Control Interface (ECI) is licensed 
under the LGPL.

3. Changes in 2.6.x series
--------------------------

- Basic support for monitoring and modifying JACK port connections,
   from Ecasound's interactive mode, has been added. See
   the ecasound-iam(1) man page and the related mailing list
   thread at:
   http://www.eca.cx/ecasound-list/2008/09/0061.html

- The syntax for specifying JACK inputs and outputs has
   been refactored. Note that old syntax is still supported
   as well, although marked as deprecated. See ecasound(1)
   manual page and the related mail thread at:
   http://www.eca.cx/ecasound-list/2008/09/0066.html
   http://www.eca.cx/ecasound-list/2008/09/0076.html
   Closes sffeat:1415822 sffeat:2134183
   https://sourceforge.net/support/tracker.php?aid=1415822
   https://sourceforge.net/support/tracker.php?aid=2134183

- Important bugfixes to "playat" audio object implementation.
   Same bugs can also be triggered with "select".
   See http://eca.cx/ecasound-list/2009/01/0089.html

- The standalone ECI C implementation has been refactored,
   fixing bugs and giving a small performance boost to
   ECI applications using it. Note that this code is used
   by most ECI language bindings. Closes sfbug:1412409
   https://sourceforge.net/support/tracker.php?aid=1412409

- Numerous small improvements and bugfixes. Affected
   bug items (not mentioned above):
     https://sourceforge.net/support/tracker.php?aid=2527049
     https://sourceforge.net/support/tracker.php?aid=2505551

Full list of changes is available at:
  - http://www.eca.cx/ecasound/history.php

4. Interface and configuration file changes
-------------------------------------------

Interactive mode commands 'ai-wave-edit', 'ao-wave-edit' and
'c-mute' (replaced by 'c-muting') have been deprecated. They still 
work in this release, but will be removed in a future release.

JACK audio object syntax has been updated. Object keywords 'jack_generic',
'jack_auto' and 'jack_alsa' have been deprecated. They still
work in this release, but will be removed in a future release.
Object keywords 'jack' and 'jack_multi' should be used instead.

The somewhat misleading options '--daemon', '--daemon-port', etc
have been deprecated, and more appropriately named options
'--server' and '--server-tcp-port' have been added.

Formatting of the string returned by interactive mode command 
'cs-status' (aliases 'st' and 'status'), has been updated.

Largefile (LFS) support (+2GiB files) is now enabled by default,
without need for specifying '--with-largefile' to configure.
The default autoconf macro AC_SYS_LARGEFILE is now used to
check whether the system is LFS compliant (practically all
systems are nowadays). The old '--with-largefile' configure
option is still there, but no longer has any effect. For
background information, see:
  - http://www.suse.de/~aj/linux_lfs.html
  - http://www.gnu.org/software/hello/manual/autoconf/System-Services.html

5. Contributors to 2.6.0 series
-------------------------------

Patches - Accepted code, documentation and build system changes
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

v2.6.0:
   * Sacré, Dominic [dsacre]
       Fixes to 'jack_generic'

Last minute release testing
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

v2.6.0:
   * Avuton Olrich
       Found a showstopper bug in ecasignalview on
       the release day
   * Julien Claassen
       Various problems in the candidate releases

Bug Hunting - Reports that led to bugfixes (items closed)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

v2.6.0:
   * Erik Nomitch (2)
       Nasty bug in 'playat' implementation
       Ecasound did not properly ignore unknown RIFF WAVE chunks
   * Joel Roth (2)
       Lack of -fPIC causes trouble to ECI impls on amd64
       sfbug:2527049
   * Sergei Steshenko (1)
       Problems with '-ev'
   * Duphil (1)
       Loop devices saved with incorrect syntax
   * Rocco <linuxmedia4 at emailaddr.hidden> (1)
       sfbuf:2527049

6. Links and files
------------------

Web site (and mirrors):
 	http://eca.cx/ecasound (fi)
 	http://ecasound.seul.org (us)
 	http://ecasound.sourceforge.net (us)

Source package:
 	http://eca.cx/ecasound/download.php
 	ecasound-2.6.0.tar.gz, md5sum:
 	41f9445b9a9c0cde141831cb53d1ef8f

List of distributions with maintained Ecasound support:
 	See http://eca.cx/ecasound/download.php