[Openal-devel] Some patches used in Debian openal-soft package

[Chris Robinson]

Hi Andres.

Out of curiosity, how many unmaintained projects are there that require 
openal-config, and can't be patched by distros to use pkg-config instead? 
IIRC, the old OpenAL also used pkg-config, so using that should still work 
fine for both the old and new library.

Honestly, I find all the non-centralized *-config scripts to be really messy, 
and the less temptation for people to use them, the better, IMO. At least pkg-
config keeps it all tidy and works through an established interface for all 
packages, whereas separate *-config scripts sometimes have "unique" options 
and behaviors, making things more confusing in the end.

That is, unless someone can convince me otherwise. But the maintenance cost 
and usability of such a script, especially when a pkg-config script is already 
available, doesn't seem worth it to me.

> The first patch (install-alsoft.conf.patch) is used to optionally install
> alsoftrc.sample as a configuration file in /etc/openal/alsoft.conf. It is
> optional and must be set so that someone who may be building and installing
> the openal- soft libraries directly from a source tarball don't get their
> alsoft.conf file overwritten unintentionally.

Perhaps it would be better to install it as alsoft.conf.example, or something. 
The given alsoftrc.sample isn't intended to be used as a "default" 
configuration file, but to show and explain how to use the various options.

> The fifth patch is used to allow Debian packages to build the static
> library. I'm not sure if this is necessary still. In any case, it applies
> after applying all other patches.

I've been vocal about this before, but I still do not think it's wise to 
build/install a static lib of OpenAL on systems that can use dynamic libs.