[vlc-devel] [PATCH 0/8] asynchronous aout stream

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Le perjantaina 8. maaliskuuta 2019, 17.24.38 EET Thomas Guillem a écrit :
> Hello,
> 
> This patch set should be applied on top of my clock branch:
> https://code.videolan.org/jbk/vlc/commits/clock-core/32
> 
> All aout stream commands are now asynchronous.
> 
> From an aout module point view, this mean that play/drain/flush/start/stop
> are always executed from the same thread.

This is not a promise that should be made. If/when audio decoder or filter get 
threaded, it will not be reasonable to provide such guarantee any longer. It 
wouldn't be the first or even the second time that we shoot ourselves in the 
feet with that silly API guarantee.

Besides, it is *useless*. We want low-latency for user controls and 
sometimes also for playback. Running everything in a single thread avoids 
blocking during function calls from the decoder/filter or the GUI. But it does 
not help at all with low latency. In fact, it even increases those latencies.

And lastly, this breaks flow control.

If you don't want Play to block, you need to implement it that way in the 
individual plugins. You cannot cheat your way out of that with core changes. 
However, again, this will break flow control, so it does not seem like a good 
idea anyhow.

And if you don't want Flush to block, then you actually need to change the 
plugin API so that we know when the buffers are drained/flushed. You cannot 
cheat your way out if it either.

So this seems not just useless, but actually harmful to me.

-1 from my behalf.

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