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Bug 5512

Summary: Consider restoring previous default paths for timidity.cfg
Product: SDL_mixer Reporter: Ralph Versteegen <teeemcee>
Component: miscAssignee: Sam Lantinga <slouken>
Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX QA Contact: Sam Lantinga <slouken>
Severity: normal    
Priority: P2 CC: sezeroz
Version: unspecified   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   

Description Ralph Versteegen 2021-01-29 00:28:29 UTC 
The patch at bug 4896 (hg 89f446aae9b5) changed how timidity.cfg is found, so that on Unix fewer default locations are searched. This change hasn't made its way into a release yet. The patch was generally an improvement, but it does break MIDI playback for some people for whom it worked before, like myself. So I wonder whether it would be better to add back the old default paths to avoid breakage, because you already have two defaults as a fallback anyway:
/etc/timidity.cfg
/etc/timidity/freepats.cfg  (new since 89f446aae9b5)

Previously it used to also look for
/usr/share/timidity/timidity.cfg
/usr/local/share/timidity/timidity.cfg
/usr/local/lib/timidity/timidity.cfg

Also, I get the impression that Ubuntu uses /etc/timidity/timidity.cfg + /etc/timidity/freepats.cfg


In my case /etc/timidity.cfg uses the FluidR3 soundfonts which SDL_mixer's obsolete TiMidity fork (apparently from 26 years ago, wow!) doesn't support, while my /usr/share/timidity/timidity.cfg is Freepats.

I note that even TiMidity++ 2.13.2 from 2004 supports soundfonts so it's unfortunate that SDL_mixer doesn't support using the system's ALSA MIDI sequencer, so that such things wouldn't be SDL_mixer problem anymore.

(SDL_mixer's FluidSynth backend doesn't work out of the box for me either, because it only looks for /usr/share/sounds/sf2/FluidR3_GM.sf2 (which I placed at a nonstandard location, /usr/local/share/timidity/). Speaking of, you could add FluidR3 GS.sf2 as a default too?)
Comment 1 Ozkan Sezer 2021-01-29 17:09:13 UTC 
(In reply to Ralph Versteegen from comment #0)
>  but it does break MIDI playback for some people for whom it worked before

Not sure that I want to 'fix' this:  Why do you not use the
'--with-timidity-cfg=FILE' configury switch to customize for
your own setup?
Comment 2 Ralph Versteegen 2021-01-30 12:19:42 UTC 
(In reply to Ozkan Sezer from comment #1)
> Not sure that I want to 'fix' this:  Why do you not use the
> '--with-timidity-cfg=FILE' configury switch to customize for
> your own setup?

That's just one solution, which requires recompiling SDL_mixer (which the large majority of users are not going to do), although other solutions don't.

However I guess generally the library will be compiled by Linux/BSD/etc distro package maintainers who would customise config to match whereever that distro puts the instrument patches... a fact I honestly hadn't considered, since I use Slackware and had to install patches myself.

Anyway, I'm not asking you to do something about this, as I fixed my own problem myself. I really only wanted to bring it up as a suggestion and leave it you.
Comment 3 Ozkan Sezer 2021-01-30 13:41:15 UTC 
Closing this as WONTFIX for now.
Comment 4 Sam Lantinga 2021-01-30 20:36:04 UTC 
Just to double check, if you set the TIMIDITY_CFG environment variable, does SDL_mixer do the right thing without being recompiled?
Comment 5 Ozkan Sezer 2021-01-30 20:37:39 UTC 
(In reply to Sam Lantinga from comment #4)
> Just to double check, if you set the TIMIDITY_CFG environment variable,
> does SDL_mixer do the right thing without being recompiled?

Yes, that's the idea.  Ralph: please confirm that it works for you, too.
Comment 6 Ralph Versteegen 2021-01-30 22:46:40 UTC 
Yes, can confirm TIMIDITY_CFG works (though I added /etc/timidity/freepats.cfg as a more robust fix). I'll re-close this.