Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] gr-audio: one component to rule them all

[Don Ward]

Josh Blum wrote:

> On 03/29/2011 04:17 PM, Don Ward wrote:
> > Josh Blum wrote:
> >
> > > I have created a new top level component called gr-audio. The goal of
> > > gr-audio is to combine all supported audio architectures under a single
> > > source and sink block.
> >
> > [snip...]
> >
> > > At runtime, an available audio architecture is selected.
> > > This selection is based on default priority, or if present, a
> > > configuration file setting.
> >
> > Is there any way to specify in the code (e.g., through a command-line
> > option) which audio device to use?
>
> There isnt, but, it would be conceivable to have an api call to set the
> preferred architecture. Have you found a need for one?

(To be clear, I want to specify the architecture (alsa, portaudio,
windows, etc.), not the device name.)

For my applications, I have used 

 from gnuradio import audio_portaudio as audio

to get good results from any system I run them on, including the
temporary Cygwin and MinGW installations I use for testing.  For
testing, it would be nice to be able to specify the architecture
to test on the command line of the test program.

With the new code, my only choice is to specify the architecture
in a file in my home directory, which is different for each
temporary installation Cygwin or MinGW.  Also, it appears that I 
can only set a preference and have no way of telling whether I am
actually using the architecture I asked for.

Could we have optional arguments to audio.{source,sink} to specify
the architecture (default="auto") and whether the specified
architecture is required or only preferred?

As an aside, I have never known where to find the documentation
for the configuration (or is it preferences?) file(s) (yes, I found
the info for gr-audio in the README file).  Maybe we need a FAQ
entry telling about config.conf, common options, and what to search 
for in the code for the less common options.

-- Don W.