[Portaudio] Re: portaudio in Debian, license updates?

[Bjorn Roche]

Markus:

Thanks so much for your comments. I will say more below about our code, 
but I think you are right to critisize our process. Personally, I'd like 
to see us using a bug tracking system and a better source code management 
and patch management system. I don't have enough expereience in this area, 
(I am a math and audio geek not an open source software developement 
geek), but I do believe Sourceforge can offer many of the tools we need to 
improve our process.... but that is for another thread.

More comments below....

On Sun, 19 Feb 2006, Markus Meyer wrote:

> Ross Bencina schrieb:
>
>> There are numerous active commercial applications which depend on
>> PortAudio.. it is far from dead and gone. Quite naturally I believe it
>> to be a technically superior solution to RtAudio, primarily because
>> (last time I checked) RtAudio does not attempt to solve many of the
>> technical problems which PortAudio does.
>
> I agree that PortAudio has many functions and design elements that are
> not (yet) in RtAudio. The desire by the Audacity development team to
> look at other APIs is because of the following factors. Note that I can
> only speak for myself here, though I think that other members of the
> team may share some of the thoughts outlined below:
>
> * While I agree that there may be constant development on PortAudio v19
> CVS, I cannot see that there is a definitive plan to release a new
> stable version or even incremental releases to v18. It is very
> frustrating having to use a library in a stable product that has been in
> beta state literally for years. I'm not saying, you should release a
> stable v19 tomorrow. But at least making incremental releases with a
> clear management of bug reports and clear priority assignment on those
> reports would help the process. This would also assist in release
> planning for applications depending on Portaudio.

I agree. The fact that v18 is dead and v19 is still percieved as beta is a 
serious problem. I am not sure of the solution, but maybe some numbered 
releases that carefully state their limitations would be a good start. 
Bugzilla and wikki with up-to-date information would be great, too, but, 
again, another thread....

> * Portaudio v18 is way to outdated. For example, it does not support
> ALSA on Linux, and it does not have the same latency management
> Portaudio v19 has. Therefore we must move away from it. I assume the
> "commercial applications" you're talking about use Portaudio v18.

The commercial apps are probably not Linux-based. My app on the mac is XO 
Wave (www.xowave.com), and there are a bunch for PC. I think PortAudio's 
acceptance into Debian would improve its support almost immediately, as 
debain is the root of other distros. If there is something I can do 
to get PA in debian, please let me know. (We certainly discussed the 
licensing issue to death and I thought everyone agreed that "the send us 
improvements" bit was a recomendation not a requirement.)

> * Portaudio v19, on the other hand, is simply not usable on some
> platforms. E.g., I am a maintainer of the German Audacity forum
> (http://audacity.fuchsi.de/) and I regularly receive reports that
> Portaudio v19 does not work correctly. Speaking for myself here, I have
> two machines here with ALSA (Ubuntu 5.10), and all ALSA apps I've tested
> so far work, except Audacity, when compiled with Portaudio v19.
> Sometimes playing works, but after some seconds, the application just
> hangs. Another field of problems is on the Mac. It seems that there are
> lots of Mac users who are having problems with Portaudio (v18 and v19).
> We're not talking about multichannel soundcards here, but about USB
> mics, simple USB sound adapters etc., stuff that really should work. I
> understand that you didn't write the Mac port for Portaudio, but still
> switching to RtAudio might be of help here :)

The v19 code for the mac has gone through some hard times. However, I 
recently rewrote it and I personally tested it on a variety of hardware 
from built-in to USB mikes and headsets to pro hardware. It has also been 
tested on multichannel devices, intel macs and more. The reviews so far 
have been very positive. I am actively maintaining and improving it and I 
don't think you should have trouble with it anymore. There are no 
outstanding issues or bugs that I am aware of, although some things are 
not implemented, but these are well documented. If you do find 
trouble, and forward to me or to the list any error reports, I will fix it 
fast.

> * There are a number of patches which were submitted to PortAudio by us,
> which have not been incorporated into PortAudio. This is one of the
> reasons why we maintain a locally patched version of PortAudio. It would
> be good to have a formal patch management, like the one that is
> available on Sourceforge, so we would know which patches are accepeted
> and which ones are rejected and for which reason.

This doesn't address the long term issues, because I cannot commit to 
supporting Linux, but I have two Debian systems and I'd be happy to take a 
look at the diffs, and commit changes that I understand and can test. 
Especially as I am anticipating a slight lull this week.

> As I see it, the goals of the projects Portaudio and Audacity just seem
> to differ. While development of Portaudio seems to incorporate a "it
> will be ready when it is done" approach (which I think is perfectly okay
> for an open source project!), Audacity needs something that works _now_,
> and on all platforms. This is why we're looking at alternatives.

I think v19 /is/ almost done on windows ASIO and Core Audio, and I really 
don't think a lot needs to be done on Linux. The OSS stuff works fine on 
Linux from what I understand, and I thought Jack was in good shape too. My 
app runs on Linux and definately has trouble with PA/ALSA, so I'd like to 
work on that as well, though, to be honest, I am a bit baffled by ALSA. If 
PA gets into Debian, I really think that will help, as more people would 
hear about it, see it, use it, and, presumably, tell the developers what 
isn't working.


 	bjorn

-------------
Bjorn Roche
Check out my CD Mastering Software
for Mac OS X : http://www.xowave.com