On Mon, 2013-03-25 at 16:35 +0200, Tanu Kaskinen wrote: > On Mon, 2013-03-25 at 09:36 +0100, David Henningsson wrote: > > On 03/22/2013 06:01 PM, Tanu Kaskinen wrote: > > > '''Suggested solution:''' > > > * When reading configuration files, the daemon should store the origin > > > file of each option separately. This information should then be made > > > possible to query by clients. Then, pactl (a command-line utility for > > > interacting with the server) should be extended to provide a command > > > that prints the configuration of the running server, and also the origin > > > file of each option. This functionality would probably apply only to the > > > "ini-style" configuration files. Those cover most of the !PulseAudio > > > configuration, with the notable exception of the startup script. It > > > might be useful to also record the loaded startup script(s) so that the > > > startup sequence can be queried for debug purposes. > > > * Sending SIGHUP to the server process should cause it to reload its > > > configuration. This too would probably apply only to the "ini-style" > > > configuration files, not to the startup script. It's probably not > > > possible to make all configuration options changeable at run-time, but > > > that's OK. > > > > Hmm. This sounds like a lot of complexity for little gain. And potential > > bugs only affecting those who are using this not-so-widely-used feature, > > I assume. > > Are you referring to the second point only, or both points? > > I don't think the second point is for little gain. Sure, just reloading > the configuration on SIGHUP (or whatever mechanism) isn't that > interesting in itself, but runtime-changeable configuration is required > anyway in order to support configuration GUIs. I considered adding a > client API for writing configuration options to the project idea too, > but there seemed to be enough stuff in the idea already, and having such > an API has some problems (mentioned in this[1] message) for which we > would need to agree on a solution first. > > Originally, I also had another use case in mind: on Harmattan, > applications could install configuration files for a PulseAudio policy > module, and during installation PulseAudio's configuration had to be > reloaded. Since there was no support for doing that at runtime, each > application was expected to restart PulseAudio in their postinst script, > which was obviously not optimal (there could be music playing in the > background, for example). Thinking this a bit more, this probably isn't > a very relevant use case. Harmattan is dead, and we don't have other > examples where random applications would install configuration files for > PulseAudio. When PulseAudio itself is updated, the configuration may > change, but in that case it's better to restart PulseAudio anyway, since > the code has probably changed too. It would be nice to have a "deferred > restart" functionality that would restart the daemon once it becomes > idle, to avoid interrupting active streams, but that's a separate > discussion. > > [1] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.audio.pulseaudio.general/16053/focus=16109 Sorry, the link points to a wrong message. I meant this (the section starting with words "I'm also having second thoughts"): http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.audio.pulseaudio.general/16053/focus=16106 -- Tanu
