Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] Audio apps for linux on PPC: how difficult to recompile?
From: rm (async_AT_cc.gatech.edu)
Date: Sat Apr 06 2002 - 02:25:20 EEST
On Fri, Apr 05, 2002 at 02:39:33PM -0600, Pablo Silva wrote:
> The thing is that I wanted to ask you all in this list a couple questions:
> 1) How many binaries for apps are there out there specifically for
PPC linux? Everything I've found seems to assume Linux on Intel...
there are many distributions specifically for ppc that come with loads
of compiled applications (linuxppc, yellowdog, debian (?) ...).
generally though, most things are compiled from source, so i haven't
seen it to be a consideration.
i don't have experience with linux ppc and audio apps. this is
probably less trodden territory.
> 2) How difficult would it be to compile your avergage source
> for audio software for the PPC platform? Are there any snags
> I should be aware of? Is it just not the time yet to jump into
> this because of the lack of libraries or something like that
> that should be available later?
from my experience with other platforms, most of the libraries (gui,
os, file formats) should be available and work out-of-the-box with
only the 'configure; make; make install' dance.
some audio software might make ugly assumptions about endianness or the
existence of x86 hardware (timers, instruction set), but it shouldn't
be too hard to clean up.
i think, the only question on ppc is what is the alsa support like,
and what is its current latency performance under linux.
i would be interested in the answer too.
> 3) And most important... I'm trying to begin to program a small
> piece of interface software (as a
> first step and proff of concept towards something bigger later) .
[...]
> on interface criteria, not direct
> time-critical audio generating code.
i'm quite fond of python and gtk+ for interface stuff. if direct
communication with the real-time parts of the program are desired, you
can use a socket or CORBA or shared memory.
additionally, if you need to optimize your code, python makes it easy
to move that code to C and interface to it. other benefits include rapid
application development, good libraries, cross platform, ....
at least this is how i'm doing my current audio programs.
rob
----
Robert Melby
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332
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