„jack-autostart“ – Setup and Start Scripts for jackd

„jack-autostart“ is essentially a start script for my X session that

starts a „jackd“ process with appropriate commandline parameters and
configures as many applications as possible to route their playback to the JACK service.
- For this purpose, redirect all ALSA playback to JACK, and
- set JACK as default audiosink/-source for GStreamer.

Getting And Installing

The software is available in SVN:

HEAD: svn co svn://tk-sls.de/jack-autostart/ (Browse sources)

README (includes installation instructions):

README.html

Licensing

The software can be licensed under General Public License (GPL) Version 3 (or later). Parts of the software include sourcecode from JACK Audio Connection Kit (Copyright © 2000 Paul Davis), licensed under the terms and conditions of the GPL Version 2 (or later). Parts of the software include sourcecode from "ALSA parameter test program", Copyright (c) 2007 Volker Schatz (alsacap at the domain volkerschatz.com), licensed under the terms and conditions as specified in the file COPYING that is included with the distribution of "jack-autostart".

Build requirements (in terms of Debian packages):

System Requirements

(possibly slightly outdated) Build Requirements:

 ~$ sudo apt-get install gcc make \
                         libjack-dev libasound2-dev libsamplerate0-dev \
                         libxcb1-dev

Runtime requirements:

 ~$ sudo apt-get install jackd1 \
                         libasound2-plugins \
                         sysvinit-utils dialog

Note: If "whiptail" is installed but "dialog" isn't, the software falls back to using "whiptail" instead.

Enable the „loopback“ ALSA kernel driver by adding this line to the file /etc/modules:

snd-aloop

Runtime requirements (recommended):

 ~$ sudo apt-get install gconf2 gstreamer-tools libnotify-bin

Questions and Suggestions

Feel welcome to send questions and suggestions to tilt at linuxfoo dot de, or use my web-based contact form.

Known Problems

The Setup wizard jack-autostart-config does not support all possible JACK back-end drivers; currently supported are alsa and firewire.
Sub-Devices can not be chosen as playback interfaces for the alsa back-end driver. This would pose a problem e.g. for a M-Audio FastTrack USB Pro, where the subdevice decides the available I/O configuration.
Separate playback and capture devices can not be chosen for the alsa back-end driver.

Conclusion

I would be happy to receive feedback on where to go from here and how to improve the software or make it more useful for the general public.