Package: wnpp Severity: normal I'd like someone else to take this package because I am stopping using ALSA in Debian because of the poor quality packaging, the fact I am tied to an old release by this package, because everything works just as well through OSS, and because my sound card is better supported by OSS drivers. This package has serious bugs open because it only works when alsa 0.5 is installed, or it crashes xmms.
I believe there is a new version (0.5.6), which I have found at http://www.kondara.org/rpm2html/i586/xmms-aalsa-0.5.6-3k.i586.html, but it does not appear to be at the upstream website, so I am unsure if it is official. That said, there seems to be a deb of this version with no source somewhere else on the upstream website, but I am unable to understand further because I can't read japanese. However, from what I can tell from the changelog at the above URL, this new version will not crash xmms if alsa 0.5 is not installed, favouring a more conventional error message and is even buildable against libasound2 to support alsa 0.9. This raises another problem - because of the packaging of ALSA in Debian, you cannot build one source package into two binaries, one to support alsa 0.5, and one to support alsa 0.9, because libasound1-dev and libasound2-dev conflict. In short, I am no longer willing or interested to fix these problems. OSS emulation works just as well, and I am fed up of ALSA breaking with every new upstream release. If nobody takes this package within a week or two, I will orphan it and have it removed from woody, lest any stable users in the future run into this collection of mediocre software and packaging. Regards, Rob
