[Pkg-games-ubuntu] [Bug 565071] Re: [lucid] Freeze Exception Request: OpenAL minor version bump

[Maarten Lankhorst]

Hi,

Just thought as the person who requested the openal-soft update I
thought I'd chip in.

Since ubuntu 9.10 hangs indefinitely because of pulseaudio, as can be
witnessed at

http://test.winehq.org/data/d4b853695276be6d1492a909a263bcc7ce4ca828/index_Wine.html#mmdevapi:render
Because of this wine has decided to blacklist the pulseaudio device in
openal-soft if a certain extension that's added in 1.12 is not found.
Wine really needs this extension in order for robustness, and making
sure that it will not interfere with applications that may happen to use
openal, since wine also has a openal32->linux openal stub.

Furthermore openal 1.12 has several pulseaudio fixes not present in
earlier releases. Not adding them will result in possible multi-second
delays between an action and the sound played, because of the way
pulseaudio works. so I really want that version, since wine will do a
lot more with openal in the future, and supporting our own version would
be a gigantic pain..

Cheers,
Maarten

Also to witness the hang in ubuntu 9.10, link this snipped with -lopenal:
extern void alcOpenDevice(const char *); int main() { alcOpenDevice("PulseAudio Software"); return 0; }

The program should immediately terminate, but instead hangs
indefinitely.

-- 
[lucid] Freeze Exception Request: OpenAL minor version bump
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/565071
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Status in “openal-soft” package in Ubuntu: New

Bug description:
OpenAL upstream has released a new minor version that should be fully backwards compatible:  http://kcat.strangesoft.net/openal.html

    * Fixed playback when the PulseAudio buffer is calculated to be more than 64KB.
    * Restored compatibility with some older PulseAudio libs.
    * Alternative buffer sizing for PulseAudio, specified using a new config option.
    * Improved buffer size calculations, to prevent drastic latency changes when certain properties (such as ALC_FREQUENCY) are modified.
    * Added capture support for the PortAudio backend.
    * Support for PortAudio under Windows.
    * Added support for the format extensions AL_EXT_MULAW, AL_EXT_MULAW_MCFORMATS, and AL_EXT_DOUBLE.
    * Support for the new ALC_EXT_thread_local_context extension.
    * Improved library load time by delaying backend device probing until needed.
    * Updated alext.h to provide EFX tokens and function types.
    * Unsupported effects and filters are no longer returned by alGetEnumValue.
    * The Wave File Writer device now creates WAVEFORMATEXTENSIBLE files, to better handle multi-channel and float output.

According to the author, it will be needed for upcoming Wine beta releases.  libopenal1 has a handful of rdepends, and I've tested them using a package for the new release (using a simple uupdate) that works perfectly.  The rdepends do not need a rebuild.