[kaffe] Re: [tritonus-user] Tritonus on kaffe

[Dalibor Topic]

--- Stuart Ballard <sballard at netreach.com> wrote:
> Dalibor Topic wrote:
> > 
> > My current code fits it into kaffe's auto* tools
> based
> > build as en extension library, adds a configure
> option
> > for the sound backend to use, compiles the java
> > libraries, and links the C++ libraries
> accordingly.
> 
> Ouch, a configure option for the sound backend?
> Isn't that going to make 
> life hard on distributors like Debian, who don't
> force their users into 
> a single sound system? Will they need to build
> multiple versions of 
> Kaffe depending on which sound backend is desired?
> 
> Wouldn't some way of doing it at runtime be
> preferable?

Currently, I've only got esd to work, so there is not
much choice anyway: esd, or no sound at all. ;) there
are a few reasons why I think a sound backend option
makes sense:
a) native sound libraries are written in C++. We
shouldn't require having a C++ compiler in order to
build kaffe, as that would make porting to systems
like minix even harder. So there should be a
convenient way to tell the configure script that we
don't want to bother with it.
b) In order to compile kaffe with sound support, you
need libesound and esd.h. Many linux distributions
don't install libesound development files by default.
I wouldn't want to force people to install a few sound
RPMs just because they want to use kaffe for XML
processing, for example. So the default option for
sound in my patch is "no".
c) It mirrors the current situation with AWT backends.
You can only have either Xlib, Qt or no awt at all at
the same time. Changing that would require a
significant rewrite of kaffe's java AWT libraries, I
think. That would be good to have, though, as it would
in theory allow us to run those nice 3rd party AWT
implementations like PureJavaAWT.
d) I'm not sure if it is possible to have several
different MixerProviders in tritonus simultaneously.
Matthias, do you know if that works?

If so, then it shouldn't be hard to add other
backends, i.e. ALSA by just adding its class file name
to
META-INF/services/javax.sound.sampled.spi.MixerProvider

It would be pointless at the moment as the native libs
for ALSA don't compile on kaffe, due to some problems
with kaffeh (and me not being able to tell automake to
quote $ in the Makefile.am).

I'll better try to post some code tonight, so you guys
 have something to play with. I have to write up a
massive ChangeLog entry first ...

best regards,

dalibor topic

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