Announcing the Audio Creation SIG / CCRMA merger effort

[Fernando Lopez-Lezcano]

On Mon, 2007-09-17 at 17:59 -0600, Richi Plana wrote:
> On Mon, 2007-09-17 at 15:32 -0700, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote:
> > For now it would be great to get the Planet CCRMA packages that are
> > already there moved into Fedora proper (I think Planet CCRMA is quite
> > complete, but of course I'm slightly biased :-). If there are
> > interesting apps missing I/we'd like to know, of course - I'm sure there
> > are cool apps out there I have not yet packaged :-)
> 
> Could someone update the wiki with a list of outstanding packages that
> need attention, then?
> 
> I google'd for Planet CCRMA's site (not on the wiki) and found the
> current repo. I found the compiled binaries but the SRPMS subdirectory
> is empty.

Sorry, the source packages are common to all versions and architectures
currently supported. They all can be found here in the link posted by
Hans. Maybe I should write a script to cross link them but I'd rather be
doing other things....

> What are the packages that need to be packaged for Fedora? And is
> packaging going to start from scratch or are we picking up where Planet
> CCRMA left off?

Please don't start from scratch... I'm sure all packages can be improved
but I have spent a lot of time (see below) in them and they do work. Of
course Planet CCRMA does not have _everything_ so there's bound to be
music, midi and audio packages that it does not have and would be
interesting to add to Fedora anyway. 

> I've found the CCRMA site http://ccrma.stanford.edu/ and the Planet
> CCRMA site (http://ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/software/). How
> exactly are the two related? I understand that CCRMA has a couple of
> software projects (some old, some active). Is PlanetCCRMA currently
> in-sync with the projects at CCRMA? I guess what I'm trying to ask (and
> I can't find the right words to express it) is what's the intersection
> of the two entities in terms of software and what is the
> <term-for-the-opposite-of-intersection>?

CCRMA, the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics is were I
work, it is part of the Music Department at Stanford but it is quite
interdisciplinary (there are students from Music, EE, Computer Science,
Psychology, etc, etc). 

We have been using linux as our main computing platform for quite a
while (first installs around the end of '96 - before that we were using
NeXTs and before _that_ - before my time here - a mainframe and custom
built hardware synthesizer and before __that__ computer music hackers
were "allowed" to use the computer resources of the AI lab at Stanford
at night only). We also have OSX machines as well (no Windows so far).

I maintain the computer and networking infrastructure here, including
software (and I also teach and I am a composer and researcher - when I
find time for that :-). 

At the beginning of the Linux era, as we used more and more Linux
machines (dual booting with NextStep!) I started packaging software we
were using for teaching, so that installs would be easier (we currently
have around 50 Linux machines online). And added kernels with the low
latency patches. And added ALSA drivers and the infrastructure they
needed when they were just starting. After a while some CCRMAlites
started asking about the packages and I pointed to the directory where
they lived. Then they asked how to install them. Eventually I wrote a
short web page about them. I then made the mistake of announcing the
informal project in the cmdist mailing list :-) That was back in 2001
and I think it was based on RedHat 7.2 at the time. The project was
called "Planet CCRMA"[*]. 

After that it went downhill (figuratively speaking :-) as it became very
popular and transformed into a black hole for any ammount of available
time I had. As the community of users grew worldwide I started getting
requests for packages that I would probably not have installed at CCRMA.
So the opening of the project to the world had the nice side effect of
broadening the scope of software that I installed at CCRMA. Very good
overall. 

Hope this all makes sense and answers your question...

CCRMA is the institution for/on/with which I created the project, Planet
CCRMA is the project. Without the continued support of CCRMA, Planet
CCRMA would not exist. 

-- Fernando

[*] the name Planet CCRMA actually predates the repository, it was used
by a bunch of web pages we maintained with Juan Reyes (a Visiting
Scholar and Composer who coined the name) explaining how to use the
linux based resources we had.