Re: [LAD] [Jack-Devel] more jack/qjackctl madness : some comments

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DateMon, 18 May 2009 12:10:45 -0400
From Paul Davis <[hidden] at linuxaudiosystems dot com>
ToRui Nuno Capela <[hidden] at rncbc dot org>
CcNedko Arnaudov <[hidden] at arnaudov dot name>, Linux Audio Developers <[hidden] at lists dot linuxaudio dot org>, JACK Developers <[hidden] at jackaudio dot org>
In-Reply-ToRui Nuno Capela Re: [LAD] [Jack-Devel] more jack/qjackctl madness : some comments
Follow-UpNedko Arnaudov Re: [LAD] [Jack-Devel] more jack/qjackctl madness : some comments
Follow-UpFons Adriaensen Re: [LAD] [Jack-Devel] more jack/qjackctl madness : some comments
Follow-Up[hidden] at gmx dot de Re: [LAD] [Jack-Devel] more jack/qjackctl madness : some comments
On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 11:57 AM, Rui Nuno Capela <[hidden]> wrote:
>
> from where i stand, qjackctl does not need jackdbus support whatsoever.
> it's kind of the other way around, if i may say. and the way around is not
> about qjackctl per se, but to plain old good command-line jackd.

i'd like to clarify (again) based on ongoing conversations in #jack.

the issue that qjackctl could consider is not jackdbus, or dbus in
general. its the JACK control API that was discussed at LAC 2008.
right now, qjackctl simply claims to know how to start the JACK
server, offers a dialog to let the user pick settings, and then
constructs a set of command line arguments for jackd.

this will continue to work forever, but it is less flexible than we
would like (consider what happens every time JACK gets a new option
added (or taken away). the control API allows a control application to
query the jack server (actually, its really querying the library that
contains the implementation of the jack server that the control app is
linked with), and discover what the available parameters are etc. etc.

the dbus stuff is really mostly orthogonal to this (i stress the
"mostly")  - its just another example of a control app/system. there's
no reason why qjackctl would or should want to interact with it.

however, the one area where these things overlap is "auto-start". this
is because what it means to "auto-start" a JACK server differs in the
following two scenarios:

    * vanilla JACK install - there is no "jack control" system in
place or in use
    * with jackdbus - there is a daemon in place listening for
requests to start/stop/reconfigure the server

in the first scenario, the ~/.jackdrc file (if it exists) takes care
of auto-start. but if jackdbus is in use, then auto-start means
something really quite different.

we are are discussing ways to reconcile these differences on IRC.

for those who don't understand why the second scenario is worth
considering, i would point to the questions that (relatively)
frequently come from users about changing a running JACK system to use
another h/w interface, or to start/stop JACK temporarily for some
reason. there is one school of opinion that would say that "stop jackd
and restart it with the correct parameters" is the correct approach to
this question. i think that at LAC2008 it was felt that we could do
better.

--p
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