The libhitaki project

2024/02/16 Takashi Sakamoto

Introduction

This is a child project of libhinawa.

• https://github.com/alsa-project/libhinawa

Originally the function produced by ALSA firewire stack was operated via libhinawa API. Nowadays libhitaki does the work instead.

I design the library for userspace applications to operate ALSA HwDep character device for specific functions implemented in ALSA drivers for Audio and Music unit in IEEE 1394 bus.

The latest release is 0.2.1.

License

Released under GNU Lesser General Public License version 2.1 or later, including UAPI header of ALSA firewire stack released under GNU General Public License version 2.0.

Repository

• https://github.com/alsa-project/libhitaki

Documentation

• https://alsa-project.github.io/gobject-introspection-docs/hitaki/

Dependencies

• GLib https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/glib
• GObject introspection https://gi.readthedocs.io/
• Linux kernel version 4.5 or later

Requirements to build

• UAPI header of Linux kernel
• Meson build system https://mesonbuild.com/
• Ninja build system https://ninja-build.org/
• PyGObject https://pygobject.readthedocs.io/ (optional to run unit tests)
• gi-docgen https://gnome.pages.gitlab.gnome.org/gi-docgen/ (optional to generate API documentation)

How to build and install

Build and install :

$ meson setup (--prefix=directory-to-install) build-directory
$ meson compile -C build-directory
$ meson install -C build-directory

After installed, C headers for APIs are available and pkg-config returns arguments for them. For example :

$ pkg-config --cflags --libs hitaki
-I/usr/include/hitaki -I/usr/include/glib-2.0 -I/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/glib-2.0/include -lhitaki

How to refer document

$ meson setup --prefix=directory-to-install -D doc=true build-directory
$ meson install -C build-directory
$ xdg-open directory-to-install/share/doc/hitaki/index.html

Supplemental information for language bindings

• PyGObject https://pygobject.readthedocs.io/ is a dynamic loader for libraries compatible with g-i.
• hitaki-rs https://github.com/alsa-project/hitaki-rs/ includes crates to use these libraries.

About Hitaki

Hitaki is a family of bird in Japanese. The representative species of family is Joubitaki (Phoenicurus auroreus in binary nomenclature), known as Daurian redstart.

The small bird sings in several kind of voices, one of which is like the sound to strike flints against steel to produce sparks in human perception. The name Hitaki might come from the voice according to legend since the name was written by two successive Kanji characters in days past; Hi (U+2F55 ⽕) and Taki (U+713C 焼). The former means fire. The latter often means bake or burn something, however it means ignite in the context. The name is written by one Kanji character (U+9DB2 鶂) later.

We can see Hitaki as a bird to sing in a voice like igniting fire. The bird definitely operates our devices in IEEE 1394 bus to process audio.

End