[linux-audio-announce] Ecasound 2.3.2 released

1. A short summary of changes Support has been added for libsndfile. This allows to access a number of new audio file formats such as W64, PVF and VOC files. Integration with libaudiofile and MikMod has also been improved. Bugs in the native Python ECI implementation have been fixed. Rubyecasound, a Ruby ECI implementation, has been added to the package. A serious memory-leak in list handling functions of the C ECI implementation was fixed. This bugfix also affects C++, Perl and PHP ECI implementations. Compiling Ecamegapedal works again as the header files missing from the previous 2.3.1 release are now again included in the dist-package. 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. Ecasound is licensed under the GPL. The Ecasound Control Interface (ECI) is licensed under the LGPL. --- 3. Changes since last release * Rubyecasound, a Ruby ECI implementation, has been added to the package. Developer documentation can be found at <http://eca.cx/eci>. Rubyecasound was developed by Jan Weil. * Some files were missing from the previous 2.3.1 release dist-package. This caused the "make check" test procedure to fail, and also prevented from compiling Ecamegapedal against 2.3.1. In 2.3.2 the missing files are once again included in the dist-package. * Libsndfile support has been added to Ecasound (development item 'edi-33'). Support for libaudiofile has also been improved in this release. The user can now compile in support for both libraries at the same time. It is possible to use command-line options to select which library to use for a given file. Similar improvements have been made to the MikMod support. See the ecasound(1) man page for more details. * Some bugs in libsamplerate integration have been fixed. Upgrading to libsamplerate version 0.0.15 or newer is recommended. This release contains a few important fixes that affect Ecasound. A few examples of resampling with Ecasound have been added to the docs: <http://www.wakkanet.fi/~kaiv/ecasound/Documentation/examples.html>. * A severe memory-leak bug was found and fixed in the C ECI implementation. This bug affects applications that heavily use EIAM commands that return lists of strings. The C ECI is used by C++, Perl, PHP and Python ECI implementations. * Bugs in the native Python ECI implementation have been fixed. The C-based Python ECI implementation is still selected as the default, but you can override this with the '--enable-pyecasound=python' option to configure. Note, 'native' here means that ECI API is implemented without linking to any Ecasound libraries. Instead the ECI implementation forks 'ecasound' binary on the background and communicates with it using pipes. This allows for clear decoupling between ECI apps and specific Ecasound version. More information about ECI can be found at <http://www.eca.cx/eci>. Full list of changes is available at <http://www.wakkanet.fi/~kaiv/ecasound/history.html>. --- 4. Interface and configuration file changes None. --- 5. Contributors Patches - Accepted code, documentation and build system changes Jan Weil (2) -- rubyecasound ECI implementation, new docs Mark de Wever (1) -- typo in libecasoundc-config usage Kai Vehmanen (various) Bug Hunting - Reports that led to bugfixes (items closed) Fernando Pablo Lopez-Lezcano (1) -- preset.h not installed Jan Weil (1) -- the ecacontrol.py bug --- 6. Links and files Web sites: http://www.eca.cx http://www.eca.cx/ecasound http://www.eca.cx/eci Source packages: http://ecasound.seul.org/download http://ecasound.seul.org/download/ecasound-2.3.2.tar.gz Distributions with maintained Ecasound support: Agnula - http://www.agnula.org AltLinux - http://www.altlinux.com Debian - http://www.debian.org FreeBSD - http://www.freebsd.org/ports/audio.html Gentoo Linux - http://www.gentoo.org Mandrake - http://www.mandrake.org PLD Linux - http://www.pld.org.pl SuSE Linux - http://www.suse.de/en Contrib Packages and Add-On Distributions: AudioSlack for Slackware - http://www.audioslack.com PlanetCCRMA for RedHat/Fedora - http://www-ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/software Thac's RPMs for Mandrake - http://rpm.nyvalls.se Apps.kde.com packages for Mandrake/Redhat/SuSE - http://apps.kde.com/rf/2/info/id/2146 Note! Distributors do not necessarily provide packages for the very latest Ecasound version. -- http://www.eca.cx Audio software for Linux!