winealsa.drv patch to enum all software devices from .asoundrc

[Chris Robinson]

On Monday, February 13, 2012 6:12:00 PM Нискородов Серёжа wrote:
> >> Here is another trouble with snd_ctl_open. Not all devices in alsa
> >> configuration files have a predefined ctl. Especially defined by user,
> >> for example I don't always define a ctls for all my devices in
> >> .asoundconf
> > 
> > You can use the "hw:" prefix for snd_ctl_open. All you need it for is to
> > get the card info and the available device indices, which doesn't rely on
> > a custom prefix.
> 
> It's Ok for hardware devices, but what about software devices?

As long as you can set a custom prefix for the snd_pcm_open call, any device 
that can accept CARD and DEV parameters will work, whether it's hardware 
("hw:", "plughw:"), software ("dmix:", "plug:dmix:"), or whatever.

For devices that can't, you'd explicitly list them in the registry. Since 
you've already gone through the trouble of writing up a custom ALSA device in 
.asoundrc, is it that much of a problem to also explicitly tell Wine about it? 
It's not something normal users do, but for "power users" I don't see a 
problem with asking them to tell Wine about it.

Though I wouldn't be opposed to having a driver-specific configuration GUI 
where this could be written too, to avoid regedit.

> Here is one small thing... You can not predict what devices are
> configured for me or someone else.

Nor can you predict how much junk snd_device_name_hint will give. Since 
snd_device_name_hint requires the user to go out of their way to be useful 
(i.e., edit .asoundrc to get their device defined and listed, and delist 
unwanted devices), I don't think it's that useful to have for normal users.