RPI3 sound for www/chromium, was Re: How much memory to compile www/chromium?

[Brian Scott]

On 19/12/18 4:49 pm, Jan Beich wrote:
> bob prohaska <fbsd at www.zefox.net> writes:
>
>> On Tue, Dec 18, 2018 at 11:41:44PM +0000, Jamie Landeg-Jones wrote:
>>
>>> bob prohaska <fbsd at www.zefox.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Setting MAKE_JOBS_NUMBER_LIMIT=2 allowed www/chromium to compile successfully over
>>>> several days. The -DBATCH option was used, in hopes it'd fetch the right options. 
>>> Use "make config-recursive" before you start. It will present to you upfront all
>>> the option screens that would appear during the build.
>>>
>>> I've noticed it sometimes misses some, if you add some dependency in one of the menus.
>>> So to be sure, once it's finished its run, if you've made any option changes, run
>>> it again, and again and again etc.. until you no longer get menus popping up.
>>>
>> That's a good idea provided one knows beforehand which options to select. I very
>> seldom know which options apply, especially on the first try. After a few failures
>> my guesses sometimes improve....
>>
>> In the case of www/chromium it looks like the sound support is wrong, but so far
>> it isn't obvious which sound option is correct. Would anybody hazard a guess
>> as to what sound support works on a Pi3?
>>
>> The clearest hint so far is a report of
>> ALSA lib pcm_oss.c:835:(_snd_pcm_oss_open) Cannot open device /dev/dsp
>> when starting up chrome.
> According to https://svnweb.freebsd.org/changeset/base/222980 sound(4)
> was enabled by default only on x86 archs.

7 years later however things have thankfully progressed a little. Sound
output works fine on other RPIs (in particular the original B that I have).

I believe the problem now is that support for builtin sound on the RPI3
is still a work in progress (it goes through the HDMI subsystem and I
think it was a 32 vs. 64 bit issue but is a mystery to me beyond that).
USB based sound adapters work fine for the most part. There were some
posts recently on the list about full speed/high speed devices and
limitations in buffer size that you might want to have a look at. The
RPIs don't have any native sound input so the USB solutions might be a
better idea anyway if you need input.

I'm looking forward to hearing how you go with chromium. I, and  I
suspect a lot of other people would like to see a web browser better
than lynx on the Raspberry Pi (even without sound but I suspect that
will work with other hardware).

Good luck with your work,

Brian