On 04.08.2009, at 16:23, David Corking wrote:
Bert wrote:
If anyone wants to fix this for real, the ticket is
(1)
Thanks for the link. Will the workaround be in the next Squeakland version of /usr/bin/etoys ?
Only if someone can think of a way to reliably detect the problem.
(2)
What benefits are there from maintaining ALSA or PulseAudio support in the VM? As far as I know they are specific to Linux(*), while OSS (Open Sound System) works on most Unix except Mac OS X.
OSS is obsolete. It's not supported out-of-the-box on most modern Linux distros anymore. If at all, it is provided by an emulation layer like alsa-oss which adds considerable delay. We would get Squeak talking to OSS talking to emulated ALSA talking to PulseAudio talking to real ALSA. No wonder there is delay in that.
Here is an overview of the various Linux sound APIs:
http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/guide-to-sound-apis.html
Which sound interface does the OLPC XO (and Sugar) need?
Etoys sound works fine on the XO, which uses an older Fedora with straight ALSA. But Sugar runs on all distros, and the newer ones reroute ALSA calls to PulseAudio. This is what appears to break Squeak sound, because it works fine on "real ALSA" but breaks on "emulated ALSA".
The Right Way To Fix It would appear to be rewriting our ALSA plugin to use the "safe subset" of ALSA which is properly understood by PulseAudio.
- Bert -