[pulseaudio-discuss] [PATCH v1 0/3] bluetooth: Headset port availability

[Tanu Kaskinen]

On Wed, 2012-12-05 at 09:31 +0100, Mikel Astiz wrote:
> >>> On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 9:51 PM, Tanu Kaskinen <tanuk at iki.fi> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> I've changed my mind about the last point. Ports are not really that
> >>>> close to the ideal "routing endpoint" concept. For example, on cellular
> >>>> phones, pulseaudio may not have access to the actual audio data to and
> >>>> from the cellular modem. Modeling the cellular modem with sinks and
> >>>> sources doesn't therefore make much sense, in my opinion. Ports are
> >>>> pretty tightly coupled to sinks and sources, and I think it makes sense
> >>>> to keep things that way. It's still necessary to model the cellular
> >>>> modem routing somehow in pulseaudio, but ports don't seem like the best
> >>>> choice here.
> 
> What's the reason to have such a strict mapping between ports and sink/sources?
> 
> If this could be relaxed, and ports could be associated to multiple
> sink/sources, then it's possible that the routing would be using
> sink/sources, while the ports would be representing physical devices
> and thus shown in the UI.
> 
> This could avoid adding this new "routing node", which introduces a
> third abstraction layer with concepts that are very close to each
> other.
> 
> Otherwise, if this 1:1 mapping between ports and sink/sources is so
> strict, wouldn't it make sense to merge them?

Yes, I've held the opinion for quite some time now that sinks/sources
should be merged with ports. It's a big change and doesn't bring any new
features in itself, so I don't consider it as a high-priority thing, but
patches are welcome.

-- 
Tanu