[vlc-devel] [RFC] SDL audio output

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

   Hello,

I am summarily reviewing the audio output plug-ins.

The SDL_audio plug-in is rather simple and thus should not be hard to
maintain. Nevertheless it is totally lame as SDL is unable to provide any
kind of timing information. This means audio synchronization is impossible.
This raises the question of the usefulness of the plug-in.

Below is the list of back-ends. My conclusion is unsurprisingly that it
SDL_Audio is useless unless you have an antique Unix operating system
without OSS nor PulseAudio nor ALSA emulation. Thus I would suggest we
either remove the plug-in or disable it by default.

[fixed size font needed]

SDL name     VLC name   Description     Verdict
-------------------------------------------------
alsa         alsa       Linux ALSA      redundant
android      ---        Android JNI     ?redundant
---          opensles   Android OpenSL  -
arts         arts(*)    KDE aRts        obsolete
baudio       ---        BeOS BeAudio    ?obsolete
bsd          ---        NetBSD/OpenBSD  ?useless
disk         file       Raw file        redundant
dma          ---        OSS (mmap)      ?useless
dsp          oss        OSS (write)     redundant
dummy        dummy      Dummy           redundant
esd          esd(*)     GNOME EsoundD   obsolete
fusionsound  ---        DirectFB        useless wrapper
iphoneos     ---        iOS CoreAudio   ?redundant
---          audioqueue iOS             -
macosx       auhal      MacOS CoreAudio redundant
nas          ---        NAS             obsolete
nds          ---        Nintendo DS     useless stub
paudio       ---        AIX Paudio      ?obsolete
pulseaudio   pulse      PulseAudio      redundant
qsa          ---        QNX QSA         ?useless
sun          ---        SunOS           ?obsolete
ums          ---        AIX UMS         ?obsolete
windib       waveout    Windows WaveOut redundant
windx5       directx    Windows DirectX redundant
---          jack       JACK            -
---          portaudio  PortAudio       -

(*) removed from VLC already

Detailed notes:

* FusionSound/DirectFB itself wraps only OSS and ALSA.
* NDS is not actually implemented currently.
* QNX can mostly emulate ALSA so QSA is not indispensable.

-- 
Rémi Denis-Courmont
http://www.remlab.net/