scratch team mailing list archive

[Derek O'Connell <doc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Amos,

On 10/02/2010 19:31, Amos Blanton wrote:
> Hi Derek,
>
> Ugh, sorry to hear that the PA related sound stuff isn't going well.
> Incidentally on my machine (9.10), using the version of the plugin that
> ships with the Scratch package (with latest PA updates) I don't get any
> stuttering on playback - although I did when I tried the plugin with the
> Squeak-vm submitted to Debian recently. But I imagine there are a lot of
> other factors I'm not aware of.
>   
I think I checked the two sources a week or two ago but thanks for the
reminder, I will check again. This may be related to my question back in
December about changes made to the plugin sources or  compiler options
used for the binary version of the plug-in. IIRC I could not find an
explanation why the same code compiled locally acted differently to the
binary. So I will also double check that aspect tomorrow as well.

> Re: other distros. I have heard a few requests for a Red Hat compatible
> version. I think the next generation OLPC will have a RH based OS?  I was
> thinking of trying "Alien" package converter (from deb -> rpm) to see if
> that would be a good solution. I asked a few community members to try it but
> haven't heard back.
>   
Alien should work but it's a long time since I touched Red Hat or
derivatives so I'm not sure what is included in their std distribution
or if they follow the Linux Standards Base (for file locations at least,
probably do). The low dependency of the Squeak VM means problems on RH
should be relatively easy to fix.

More generally, wouldn't targeting Debian itself have the best chance of
being pushed to a wider audience since most distro's are derivatives of
Debian?

> Re: KDE - that would be great, but again I'm not sure how to do that. We
> still have the bug the breaks installation on Kubuntu (installer tries to
> write to gnome only file to register file type I think). If we could fix
> that, we might be able to try the current package using the ALSA plugin on
> the off chance that Phonon might emulate the asynch stuff properly.
>   

I know practically nothing about Phonon but IIRC I made a suggestion a
while back about how to get tackle installation on Kubuntu.
Unfortunately I had to swap the one KDE machine I had back to gnome just
so I could get suspend & hibernation working. Maybe Subbu would look
into it, I know he's a KDE fan.

(btw, Subbu may be busy travelling during the week so unable to reply
straight away)

> To sum up, supporting other Linux distros would be great, but the primary
> goal is plain old Ubuntu. But if Gstreamer made it possible to hook into
> lots of other options, so much the better. I would think the same could be
> said for choosing any other other popular widely available sound library,
> like SDL <http://www.libsdl.org/>.
>   

GStreamer is on the top of my list for alternatives with the caveat that
it may not avoid PA/ALSA problems (but as we agree looks better
maintained and hopefully will). I have not looked very deep yet but it
looks like other alternatives, such as libao, mainly only deal with
playback not recording. Ideally any viable alternative comes as
standard, in Ubuntu at least. Not sure if libSDL satisfies that criteria
but I will check that also. I don't suppose adding a dependency will be
a big deal if it eradicates sounds issues once and for all... well at
least for my lifetime ;-)

You mentioned previously about utilising mainstream VM, is there any
progress or plan for that? Is the Scratch plug-in going to be pushed
upstream?

-D