[LAD] alsa and OSS (again?)

[Jay Vaughan]

> True, but (1) as you mentioned, the barrier to entry is high, and (2)
> even if it is accepted, who is going to maintain it?

Evangelist/Package maintainers.  I guess I'd give this a go if I  
weren't so busy actually writing a MidiShare application .. but once  
that stabilizes out a bit, I'll have to confront the issue, or else  
nobody will want to run it.

> Researchers are
> usually busy with other things, and are not delighted by the  
> prospect to
> go with each and every new kernel release just to update a single
> driver. ;-)
>

A little bit of work needs to be done to bring the MidiShare Makefile  
into the 21st Century, I think.  If it were a bit more current with  
the modern techniques for kernel module builds, and if there was a  
bit of a separation between kernel module, user lib, user  
applications, and distribution admin tools in the build scheme, it'd  
make it easier to move MidiShare forward into a more mainstream user  
space.

> Maybe it's possible to unbundle the MidiShare Linux driver from the  
> main
> sources. That alone would make it much easier to provide frequent
> updates or patches for different kernel versions, and would provide a
> path to get the driver into the kernel at some point. From my
> experience, the rest of the MidiShare sources should compile on any
> modern Linux distro without much ado. >

That has been my experience as well.  I've put MidiShare in a rolled- 
from-source linux system, in Ubuntu, in Gentoo, in Debian, and  
heck .. even RedHat (ack,spit).

> (Well, the old gtk apps included
> with Midishare can be a headache since they require the gtk1 compat
> libs, but this could be made a configure-time option.)
>

These should be removed and placed in their own source package, imho.

> It would certainly be nice if PlanetCCRMA included Midishare again. :)
> I'm currently getting a new laptop on which I can finally run
> PlanetCCRMA alongside with SUSE again, so I'll probably look into that
> when I have the time. It shouldn't be too difficult to adapt my  
> patches
> for FC8.
>


I for one look forward to future progress in this regard .. MidiShare  
is one lovely API/realtime operating system.  ;)


;
--
Jay Vaughan