Re: [PATCH RFC v2] ALSA: seq: Mark OSS sequencer emulation as deprecated

[Takashi Iwai]

On Sat, 12 Sep 2026 14:49:45 +0200,
Takashi Iwai wrote:
> 
> OSS sequencer API emulation has been implemented as a client of ALSA
> sequencer, decades ago, at the time where OSS was still use.  But the
> API itself became very niche, and almost noone using it for a real
> purpose any longer -- only exceptions are AI and fuzzers, who have
> been causing significant maintenance burden for issues they hit &
> found.
> 
> Meanwhile, the most features of OSS sequencer API emulation can be
> achieved in user-space, either by ALSA-OSS layer (aoss) or oss-seq-emu
> program:
>   https://github.com/alsa-project/alsa-oss
>   https://github.com/tiwai/oss-seq-emu
> where the former is LD_PRELOAD wrapper and the latter is a CUSE-based
> daemon.  So we can drop the stuff from the kernel sooner or later.
> 
> Now, let's mark the OSS sequencer emulation as deprecated and give a
> warning when loaded, so that we can drop it later actually.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Takashi Iwai <tiwai@xxxxxxx>

Since there has been no objection, I'm going to queue this for 7.4.


thanks,

Takashi