[LAD] jackd/jackdbus : D-Bus or not D-Bus...

Hi All,

After hours of discussion on #jack IRC, it seems that we are in a
completely blocked situation:

1) we currently have 2 "incarnations" of the jack server named "jackd"
and "jackdbus". "jackd" is the legacy "classic" version of the server
that interact with the ~/jackdrc setting file. This setting file may
be written by Qjackctl or Ardour. "jackdbus" is the new D-Bus aware
version of the server, it use a completely new setting management
system using a "conf.xml" file. Il may use a multi-setting system in
the future.

2) the *heart" of the problem Fons initially told about is in the way
applications "auto-start" the server. This launching strategy is part
of libjack and depends of the incarnation of the server (jackd of
jackdbus) that is supposed to be used. Right now this strategy is
chosen at *compile time*, so that in "classic" mode the "jackd" server
will be launched using a fork-exec strategy, or in D-Bus mode the
"jackdbus" server will be launched by issuing a D-Bus call.

3) Since the "auto-start" strategy is chosen at compile time and thus
is coded in libjack, users will typically encounter all sort of
problems as soon as the used applications interact with a "D-Bus based
strategy" libjack (that will launch "jackdbus" incarnation) and users
still use Qjackctl that interact with the "jackd" incarnation.

4) Different ideas have been proposed to merge the 2 "jackd" and
"jackdbus" incarnations in a unique extended "jackd" exe, but nothing
really clear emerged.

4) A possible proposed solution was to define 2 completely separated
packages for jack2 : the "classic" one would package the "jackd"
incarnation and allow Qjackctl and legacy control applications to be
used with it. The "D-Bus" one would package the "jackdbus"
incarnation, and provide D-Bus bas control applications (patchage,
ladi tools....). The problem of this strategy is that..., it is a kind
of complete failure regarding the way jack is supposed to be
distributed. It may even get worse if a new "jackosc" incarnation (a
one that would allow to control the server using OSC) appears a some
point in the future...

5) Another idea would be improve the "choice of auto-start strategy"
by providing a runtime choice for that: a way for the user to select
between the "classic", "D-Bus", "OSC", strategy once globally for a
given working session...

5) Another idea would be be to completely drops the "auto-start"
strategy...This way we don't have multiple strategy anymore, and solve
most of the problems... but loose a feature.

Comments?

Stephane

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Received on Tue May 19 12:15:02 2009