[Alsa-devel] Re: [linux-audio-user] midi and ecasound

[Takashi Iwai]

At Wed, 17 Aug 2005 00:48:44 +0300 (EEST),
Kai Vehmanen wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> On Fri, 12 Aug 2005, Lee Revell wrote:
> > Um, /dev/snd/midi* are not supposed to be used directly by applications.
> > They are intended to be accessed via alsa-lib.
> 
> has there been (or is under planning) any major changes to this, or known 
> problems?

So far, no.  Simple open/read/write/close the device should work.

Of course, this will lack of the functionality alsa-lib provides,
e.g. like virtual MIDI.


> Ecasound (and many other apps) has used /dev/snd/midi* with no reported 
> problems for many years now (at least since ALSA 0.6.x). See for example:
>     http://lalists.stanford.edu/lad/2001/Apr/0176.html
> 
> I understand the general principle of getting rid of all direct 
> "user-space apps <-> ALSA kernel modules" interactions, but in this case 
> I'd like to stick with the current code until there's some practical 
> reason to update (adding support for ALSA sequencer API is another thing). 

virmidi is already in alsa-lib, so the byte streaming access via
snd_rawmidi_read()/write() can work as a sequencer port.


Takashi