[Pkg-oss4-maintainers] Bug#796636: oss4-base: Has init script in runlevel S but no matching service file

[Simon McVittie]

Control: tags 796636 + patch

On Sat, 22 Aug 2015 at 22:52:00 -0300, fsateler at debian.org wrote:
> Please add a systemd unit for the given service with the appropriate
> dependencies, which most of the time will be less strict than
> Before=sysinit.target.

The attached (which also includes Andy Whitcroft's patch for #829255)
seems to load modules as desired, and preserves the spirit of being an
rcS (early-boot) service. No debian/rules changes are necessary for
dh_systemd, since cdbs uses it automatically if present.

However, on my test system (a Lenovo X200s with Intel 82801I (ICH9) HD Audio)
I was unable to get ossplay to produce sounds via OSS4; it pauses for
about the right length of time for the length of the audio clip
(I used /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav, which is 48kHz 16-bit mono)
but I don't hear anything. The same hardware using aplay and ALSA was fine,
and produced a sound.

I am *not* going to NMU this, because I wasn't able to test it successfully
on this very common laptop hardware.

I discussed this with release team members and we reached consensus
that Linux packages should not build-depend on OSS4, taking OSS4 out
of the key packages set. If OSS4 is useful on kFreeBSD and/or Hurd, it can
be used there; but Linux has an in-tree kernel API (ALSA) that works,
and sticking to what's in-tree will give us a less fragile release process.

Regards,
    S
    non-geographically at the Cambridge BSP