[Mageia-dev] Pulseaudio push vs version freeze

Tue Mar 13 01:52:45 CET 2012

'Twas brillig, and Anne nicolas at 12/03/12 21:59 did gyre and gimble:
+> Hi there
+> 
+> After all discussions about pulseaudio that happened on IRC and on this
+> mailing-list, we had to take a decision about submitting or not this new
+> version. Version freeze is a MUST to follow to be able to release
+> stable. We know it's hard to stop updating software and focus on bug
+> fixing while development of these softwares do not stop upstream.
+> 
+> Anyway Colin gave some details about the reasons why we should submit
+> it. There was discussion during council meeting tonight and finally here
+> is the plan: pulseaudio is submitted tonight, it will be included in
+> beta2 and it will be tested until 26/03. Colin will provide
+> documentation to help tests. If we see regression in between, then it
+> will be reverted.
+
+I just want to follow up Anne's email here.
+
+I want to make it clear this I was very much the person pushing for
+this. Several people are somewhat apprehensive about this (for various
+values of apprehensive) and I fully appreciate their concerns.
+
+By way of reassurance, I would like to describe a little the changes in
+the upstream version.
+
+This release is technically quite small. The number of commits are low
+generally, but also a high proportion of the commits are related to
+documentation, tidyups and independent new features (requiring manual
+activation) rather than changes to current feature set.
+
+Where changes to current features do exist, a lot of it relates to two
+newer APIs/subsystems which are still relatively minor parts: namely the
+passthrough API and the echo-cancellation subsystem. While these are
+important parts and will play an increasingly important role moving
+forward, they are also not part of what I would call the "critical path"
+of PA usage today.
+
+So in terms of changes that are part of that critical path, I'd say two
+primary changes come into play here:
+ * Alternative Sample Rates
+ * Headphone Jack Detection
+
+Both of these are issues that the users have often requested, but it is
+the latter that is my primary motivation for pushing for this new
+version to be included.
+
+The vast majority of the work has been undertaken by David Henningsson
+of Canonical. A variation on his patches have been part of Ubuntu for
+some time and they have offered users this capability for a while now. I
+would very much like to thank David for his work here. It's been a
+sorely needed feature and it's been a lot of work and he's done a great job.
+
+
+
+
+So the primary things to look out for here are:
+
+ 1. General regressions. Does something that used to work, now function
+poorly? I do not expect much here. Things relating to actual quality of
+the audio should also be reported (in some cases some optimisations
+might not be working as intended, but this is a relatively simple to fix
+if it crops up).
+
+ 2. Do headphones now work correctly? You should now always see a port
+dropdown in pavucontrol. This was often hidden in the past, but will now
+be visible. On HDA codecs, does plugging/unplugging headphones now
+magically switch the port correctly? If not, is it any worse than
+before? You should have separate volumes for normal usage vs. headphones
+usage. Depending on hardware you may get a slight blip when plugging in
+the headphones (e.g. if the speaker volume is loud, and the headphone
+volume quiet, you might get a very short blast of loud noise when you
+plug in headphones). Some hardware permits genuinely separate controls
+for this and avoids this blip. If so, you're lucky.
+
+ 3. Bluetooth devices. There are a few bluetooth changes. Everything
+still OK? You will have to add "Enable=Socket" to the [General] section
+of /etc/bluetooth/audio.conf to get this working, but it should work
+fine as before.
+
+
+That's all really. As always, please include "pacmd ls" output in any
+reports.
+
+Obviously for minor issues I hope to fix them super quickly, but if any
+issues come up that cannot be addressed, I can and will revert back to
+PA 1.1 for mga2.
+
+
+All the best and thank you very much for helping make this a great release.
+
+Col
+
+
+-- 
+
+Colin Guthrie
+colin(at)mageia.org
+http://colin.guthr.ie/
+
+Day Job:
+  Tribalogic Limited http://www.tribalogic.net/
+Open Source:
+  Mageia Contributor http://www.mageia.org/
+  PulseAudio Hacker http://www.pulseaudio.org/
+  Trac Hacker http://trac.edgewall.org/
+