[LAD] New proposal for the jackd/jackdbus mess

Hi all, New much simplified proposal, should be "Fons compatible", hopefully "Nedko compatible" (with little work), "Paul one package only compatible", others "keep it simple compatible"... The first "big" conceptual change compared to the current SVN state is this new "control IPC" scheme. That is the so called control API can be used on client side also. The other conceptual change is that "jackd" process is supposed to be an "always running" daemon that defines an IPC entry point to be used from "clients". This daemon does not "automatically" starts the server (as it does now), but will when requested (either by the "jackd" code directly using C API ) or by the request of external control font-end using IPC. 1) Server side: - libjackserver.so contains: server code + C control API + "new" IPC control API (server side) + C Jack API + IPC Jack API (server side) - jackd executable is linked with libjackserver.so (nothing new here) - backends (ALSA, dummy...) are linked with libjackserver.so (nothing new here) - a "standalone" client (that wants to embed the server in it's process) is linked with libjackserver.so and directly uses the C control API to control/start the server and C Jack API to be a client (nothing new here). 2) Client side: - libjack.so contains : "new" IPC control API (client side) + IPC Jack API (client side) - clients are linked to libjack.so (nothing new here) - new control front-end (jackdbus, jackOSC...) are linked to libjack.so: they control the server using the IPC control API (client side), they can be regular clients using IPC Jack API (client side) to deal with connections management and so on... - a "default" centralized state for the server is always kept in ~/ jackdrc. When a client wants to auto-start, this "default" state is used. (this is important to keep in mind) - libjack may have to start the "jackd" executable using the fork+exec way, or the "jackd" process is an "always running + relaunch" process (this has to be more defined later on...) - Qjakctl stays as a regular client, it can still start the "jackd" process as usual. It can keep its own way of keeping multiple configurations as it does now. - more sophisticated control front-end (jackdbus, jackOSC...) are now regular clients. They can use the IPC control API (client side) for more sophisticated control of the server. As regular clients, they access the API to control connections... and so on. The important thing is that those clients are *obliged* to deal with this "default" centralized state. Even if they deal with multiple configs in a new format (XML...) they are supposed to always put a "default" state in ~/jackdrc for the client "auto-start" feature to continue working. - Ardour can still do it's server control mess on its own... ((-: 3) General: - a single jack2 package is needed. It contains the "jackd" daemon/ server are before. - "jackdbus" is now conceptually separated from the Jack source code. It only uses jack.h + control.h and is linked to libjack.so as any regular client. It can be distributed separately as a more sophisticated control front-end available, or be available in the jack2 package. - old fashion users can keep their habits - new "D-Bus aware" guys can explore new fields... This scheme seems to hopefully solve most of the problems we had, and requires only a bit of change for the "jackdbus" front-end to continue working, but not much. Comments? Stephane