23 Jan
2008
23 Jan
'08
12:19 p.m.
On Tue, Jan 22, 2008 at 06:23:32PM +0000, Bob Ham wrote:
More generally, LASH isn't a frontend for JACK.
LASH (when controlling
JACK clients) relies on services that JACK provides. This isn't a bad
thing. The focus shouldn't be on taking control of jackd through LASH
but in making jackd more server-like, such that you don't need another
server just to control it.
Having plans for some audio session managament system I've been
lurking on this thread.
- LASH, or whatever session manager, will have to give
special status to JACK, it can't be just another client.
In my case, it shouldn't even try to run, stop or configure
JACK as some of the things JACK will be used for will be
and should remain outside the control of the session manager.
- The most practical setup I can imagine (for my use, YMMV)
is something that integrates the functionalities of e.g.
patchage and a session manager.
- It would have to support saving/loading a complete setup
much in the same way as you would load/save a patch in
a soft synth, but without ever touching those things that
it didn't start itself (unless told to).
- Managing JACK connections can be hard, partly because most
clients behave in a way that isn't really supportive.
Autoconnection can easily lead to circular dependencies,
it blindly assumes that you 'own' the connection and should
be allowed to control it while the other side doesn't, and
for these reasons alone it's a bad idea.
Even worse, those clients that do autoconnect from the their
own session data will fail if the 'other side' is not yet
running (or has not yet created its ports) and they will
typically not try again later. So you end up with a result
that is generally unpredictable unless carefully controlled
in terms of order of starting, and even timing.
Ideally all clients should support a mode in which they
will not try to make any external connections, and only
rely on the session manager or user to do this. It will
be a long time before this is generally supported. I'd
like to see some way to prevent clients to autoconnect,
if necessary by JACK only accepting external connection
requests from a single configurable source.
- Ideally such a system should be able to distribute clients
it starts over different workspaces. The same ones they
were on when the configuration was saved. Probably hard.
--
FA
Laboratorio di Acustica ed Elettroacustica
Parma, Italia
Lascia la spina, cogli la rosa.