linux-kernel - Re: [alsa-devel] future of sounds/oss

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Date:   Thu, 11 May 2017 10:46:47 +0200
From:   Takashi Iwai <tiwai@...e.de>
To:     Christoph Hellwig <hch@....de>
Cc:     Jaroslav Kysela <perex@...ex.cz>,
        Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...uxfoundation.org>,
        alsa-devel@...a-project.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [alsa-devel] future of sounds/oss

On Thu, 11 May 2017 10:21:33 +0200,
Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> 
> Ho Jaroslav, hi Takashi,
> 
> do you know who still uses the sound/oss drivers and why?  I've
> recently been looking into getting rid of set_fs for using
> copy_{from,to}_user and friends on kernel pointers, and the sound
> code is a big abuser, both ALSA and the legacy OSS code.

Yeah, I also started looking at it after reading the LWN article.
The removal of set_fs() in ALSA part was already finished, and I'm
currently brushing up the patches.  It'll be in 4.13 at latest.

But the set_fs() usage in OSS code is hard to get rid of, due to the
in-kernel ioctl calls, and I really don't want to touch such dusty
codes, either.  So I wanted to post the very same question, but you
were faster :)

> But looking at the OSS code it's pretty grotty, and also appears
> to be pretty much unmaintained except for global cleanups.  Is there
> any chance we could look into getting rid of it over the next few
> merge windows or are there people that rely on it?

I don't think there are any active users.  The only slight concern is
that there are a few ancient devices that are supported only by some
OSS drivers.  But these are over decades, and very unlikely alive.

That said, I'd love to drop that legacy stuff; or maybe as a
soft-landing, begin with disabling the build of sound/oss in Kconfig.

The latter can be done even for 4.12, if Linus doesn't mind.

thanks,

Takashi