FreeBSD amd64 GENERIC kernel

blubee blubeeme gurenchan at gmail.com
Mon Dec 18 16:08:43 UTC 2017 

On Mon, Dec 18, 2017 at 11:16 PM, Alexander Leidinger <
Alexander at leidinger.net> wrote:

>
> Quoting blubee blubeeme <gurenchan at gmail.com> (from Sat, 16 Dec 2017
> 21:49:08 +0800):
>
> On Sat, Dec 16, 2017 at 9:33 PM, Alexander Leidinger <
>> Alexander at leidinger.net> wrote:
>>
>> Quoting blubee blubeeme <gurenchan at gmail.com> (from Sat, 16 Dec 2017
>>> 09:39:04 +0800):
>>>
>>
> The whole point of implementing 4Front oss and not a FreeBSD for is to
>>>> K.I.S.S.
>>>> Here's why
>>>> 1)OSS v4 soundcard.h and code already hdandles ALL legacy applications
>>>> w/o
>>>> needing to implement special kernel kludges
>>>>
>>>>
>>> You are mixing API (soundcard.h) with implementation (FreeBSD kernel
>>> sound
>>> code) and ways to change its behavior (sysctl).
>>>
>>
> I just had a look at our soundcard.h and their soundcard.h.
> Yes there are differences, but this is expected as it is not a copy but
> another implementation of the same API.
>
> I had a look (well... more a glance) at the IOCTLs and other stuff (= the
> API). Most of them are the same. There are minor differences which most
> probably mean we are implementing the OSSv4 API in v4.0, while 4Front has
> moved on to OSSv4.2. Those few differences, can probably be implemented in
> FreeBSD by someone who is interested easily. The main point here is, are
> those differences that important? The parts you complain about are not
> related to those differences of the API.
>
> [a lot of technical details and questions from me cut... you didn't
> respond to any of the serious questions I've put there]
>
> These are some blog posts from mid to late 2000; Please read it and
>> understand what's he's trying to express; Then look at the audio programs
>> and see how they continue to make the same exact mistakes in 2017 going on
>> 2018.
>>
>> https://web.archive.org/web/20111001142728/http://4front-tec
>> h.com/hannublog/?page_id=34
>>
>
> I've read this article. It talks about userland issues in applications,
> not about issues we have in our kernel code.
>
> Where are these audio app developers who should be chiming in? The few
>> applications that I've ported: audio/amsynth and audio/yoshimi
>> one has OSS support already, the other one I am developing.
>> Working on implementing the OSS support I am running into issues
>>
>
> Feel free to open a new thread about your issues in multimedia@, maybe
> someone can point you in the right direction.
>
> Instead of listening u guys keep repeating FreeBSD audio is Great....
>>
>
> I don't tell it is great. I tell you haven't managed yet to point out
> where it is bad. Concrete examples instead of just telling it is bad. My
> questions you skipped were targeted to find out what is not OK. So far you
> haven't delivered an answer. I'm eager to see answers to them. So far I've
> seen you (at least to my understanding) mixing up "implementation of an
> API" (= kernel code) and "API" (soundcard.h), and in the API mixing up
> "there are differences which don't matter for the API" (but matter for the
> ABI, but this is relevant for compatibility between FreeBSD X and FreeBSD
> Y) with "this is not OSSv4 API". You complained about optional parts in the
> sound system which are disabled by default (sysctl) in a way I was
> understanding as that you complain that they are there at all (while the
> presence of the possibility not being related or affecting the ABI nor can
> be attributed to misbehavior).
>
> I'm sure we will be open "to do something", but only if there are specific
> areas pointed out and validated to be bad, instead of just telling "all is
> bad" mixing up things while talking about it and not being specific at all
> so that other people can validate that the parts you complain about do not
> work as intended.
>
> And if you reference to "linuxims" refers to the fact that we have jack
> and portaudio and whatever in the ports collection... well, this is not
> related to the FreeBSD sound system at all, those are 3rd party
> applications. We will not restrict which program someone wants to use on
> FreeBSD, and if those using those programs are happy with it, it is not
> related to the FreeBSD project at all. Do I agree that programs would be
> better of to use the FreeBSD native API instead of of some intermediate
> layer? In a lot of cases surely yes. Is this a responsibility of the
> FreeBSD project? Not at all. We are an open source project which relies on
> contributions to get "linux-programs" up and running (= ported) to FreeBSD.
> If you find such a program which doesn't behave very good on FreeBSD, you
> can help fixing it (by sending patches which make it work better on FreeBSD
> to the developers of the application in question), or find people in the
> FreeBSD community which may be interested to help fixing those programs.
> Removing those middle-layers from the ports collection is surely out of
> question as long as there is a program which depends upon one of them.
>
> In short: if you want that people agree that something is not good, you
> need to come with specific items and detailed instructions how to repeat
> what you see, so that it can be validated / repeated by someone else.
>
>
> Bye,
> Alexander.
>
> --
> http://www.Leidinger.net Alexander at Leidinger.net: PGP 0x8F31830F9F2772BF
> http://www.FreeBSD.org    netchild at FreeBSD.org  : PGP 0x8F31830F9F2772BF
>
I was actually having this conversation on both current mailing list and
multimedia.
The conversation is still on going on multimedia list somewhat.

There seems to be a lot of misinformation out there about OSS that needs to
be dispelled first.
Then I wanted to get to the actual point of implementing the 4Front OSS and
sticking to that API.

Before things can be fixed, the problem has to be clearly defined and I've
been looking at this issue
for a while since I am interested in multimedia.

My main purpose is simplicity.

Here's a general overview of the problem as I see it.

There's no real audio programming guide to speak of on FreeBSD, pointing me
to OpenBSD doesn't cut it.
Most of FreeBSD audio tools come from other platforms, even the OSS
implementation is a fork of an earlier
version of 4Front OSS.
--sure FreeBSD was able to implement some features [virtual mixing, etc]
before 4Front, then came sndio, pulse and all those other frontends
   that were basically copying Linuxisms right into FreeBSD.
--Linux did the same thing with ALSA, then Jack1, Jack2, Pulse and whatever
else the come up with next.

They didn't understand the main issue and were trying to reduce latency
when that's not really a concern for most devs or users.
Then Hannu closed source his code to try to make a living off of his work,
that didn't go so well and now we have;
ALSA, JACK1, JACK2, PULSE, SNDIO and others that I don't care to look into.

It doesn't matter how many times they create new sound architecture, unless
the root issue of bad audio programming
is rooted out, they'll just keep on coming up with the new next best thing.

Remember that it was Hannu who created the first audio driver for Linux,
it's that same legacy that everyone has been using
to this day.

This is how I think that all this could be simplified.
1) Get OSS 4.2 into FreeBSD kernel
2) create proper audio programming guide for the FreeBSD Handbook
     based on: http://manuals.opensound.com/developer/
     making sure to remove all the depreciated API calls, the manual is
very well documented.

3) 4Front OSS already supports many devices devices:
https://sourceforge.net/p/opensound/git/ci/master/tree/devlists/FreeBSD
     there's also some legacy devices in the dir /attic/
     if there are devices not supported by 4Font OSS,
     the FreeBSD drivers can be ported:
http://manuals.opensound.com/sources/drv_index.html

4) refine the FreeBSD specific parts of the 4Front OSS backend:
http://manuals.opensound.com/sources/kik.html
     look at the FreeBSD operating system links below.

5) 4Front OSS already has an ALSA emulator, collapse sndio to somehow use
the updated programming guide.

One of the nicest feature of 4Front OSS is that,
without changing a line of code legacy OSS applications should just work.
Since that's the case with legacy OSS applications, along with the
ALSA emulation, there really isn't much else that's needed.

I'm pretty sure I saw a 4Front OSS pulse wrapper as well.

The main issue is that new audio programs are being written based on
the legacy programming style.

There are pieces that FreeBSD does best because everyone here develops
FreeBSD,
those fixes can be add

Also I'd like to make sure to try to get these changes upstream as well.
Once all of this is implemented, then there's a clean, straightforward API
then additional features can be added as needed.

This will take some work but w/o it being in the kernel why bother?
Especially when people just have a knee jerk reaction to say
OSS is a mess,
our API is already compatible,
we do it better,
it's closed source license,
etc..
Most of those are not true at best
FreeBSD operating system
Source Explanation
FreeBSD/os_freebsd.h
<http://manuals.opensound.com/sources/os_freebsd.h.html> OS specific
definitions for FreeBSD
FreeBSD/bsddefs.h
<http://manuals.opensound.com/sources/bsddefs.h.html> Definitions
for routines and variables exported by osscore.c
FreeBSD/os_freebsd.c
<http://manuals.opensound.com/sources/os_freebsd.c.html> Operating system
abstraction functions for FreeBSDFiles used to build OSS and the drivers
during install
Source Explanation
FreeBSD/bsdvirtual.inc
<http://manuals.opensound.com/sources/bsdvirtual.inc.html> Wrapper
functions for virtual drivers under FreeBSD
FreeBSD/osscore.c <http://manuals.opensound.com/sources/osscore.c.3.html> OSS
core functions that need to be compiled in the target system
FreeBSD/module.inc
<http://manuals.opensound.com/sources/module.inc.6.html> Generic
OSS driver module interface for FreeBSD
FreeBSD/devid.h <http://manuals.opensound.com/sources/devid.h.html> Source
file os_build/FreeBSD/devid.h
FreeBSD/bsdpci.inc
<http://manuals.opensound.com/sources/bsdpci.inc.html> Wrapper
functions for PCI drivers under FreeBSD


I've been looking at the code, running the build script
it first detects your OS
copies or symlink OS specific files
writes some configuration headers
sets up includes
then builds as usual.

Most of that isn't necessary, just move the proper files into place
write a kmod makefile and start testing.

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