From alsa-devel-owner@alsa.jcu.cz  Wed Jan 13 14:57:19 1999
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Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1999 14:55:38 +0100 (CET)
From: Jaroslav Kysela <perex@jcu.cz>
To: Benjamin GOLINVAUX <golinvaux@benjamin.net>
cc: alsa-devel@alsa.jcu.cz
Subject: Re: as if to prove my point ...
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On Wed, 13 Jan 1999, Benjamin GOLINVAUX wrote:

> Jacob Crawley contacted me directly and we are looking for way howto
> :support ALSA driver development for SB Live which should be acceptable
> :by both sides. Looks that Creative can release some code under free
> :license (it willn't be probably GNU GPL, but something like Netscape
> :agreement for Mozilla). Main problem should be that Creative is thinking
> :about release only some library for SB Live - this should cause unwanted
> :trouble with different kernel versions :-((
> 
> 
> I'm new to linux and very (badly) impressed by the fact that kernel version
> has a severe
> impact on the drivers...
> 
> However, it is probably normal, but could you explain me why the interface,
> from a 'black box' approach (as seen by the driver programmer) does chage
> from kernel version to another...

OK. 'Black box' must use some kernel header and interfaces for it's job.
For example spinlocks, some scheduler functions (if needed) etc.. Maybe
we can try avoid these problems with some sort of callbacks, but this
makes code inefficient.

Problem is if something on which 'black box' depends will be changed in
kernel code, then we need recompile 'black box'. Another problem is that
library can be used only for one CPU type (you cannot use library for i386
with alpha machine).

							Jaroslav

-----
Jaroslav Kysela <perex@jcu.cz>
Academic Computer Centre, University of South Bohemia
Branisovska 31, C. Budejovice, CZ-370 05 Czech Republic


