I've had a hell of a year, so now I'm playing catch up on some old threads.

On 2024-09-21 17:18:21, Gregory Nowak via Dng wrote:
> Since we're getting into building custom initramfs ... Is there a
> script somewhere which can figure out the dependencies for a debian
> package, and include them into the initramfs? Specifically in my case
> alsa-utils, espeak-ng, and espeakup. Having software speech as soon as
> the kernel and initramfs loads before / is mounted would be awesome!

Funny you should mention that. One of the things I have been working on
recently to take my mind of my troubles is messing with music production.
In particular recently I wrote a script that scans for all audio devices,
writes a ALSA asoundrc file fragment you can include, and can also hook
all those ALSA devices up to JACK, plus a few other things (joystick to
MIDI ...).

fsmithred saw I was doing this, and wondered if it might help him getting
espeakup running as early as possible, for exactly the same reasons you
mention. So I've been working on that to.

So far I have it working at init run level S (S for Start, not 5 the
number), which runs before run level 2. It looks for output devices,
uses espeak or espeak-ng to tell you it found one and it's details, then
goes onto the next one. Writing that asoundrc fragment to disk in the
end. So in theory anything with a speaker plugged in should talk to you
during boot, and tell you enough details that you can configure ALSA to
use that device you liked the sound of best, or the one that you actually
heard, later.

Running the script with a different argument than what SysV init would
hand it, it'll start up JACK, and hook all your devices up to it. This
is where it scans for joysticks and adds them to. Also starts other
useful things, so that in the end you get a patch bay GUI with all your
programs routing all their audio to all your speakers, and you can use
the patch bay to remove the ones you don't want. Plus everything MIDI is
hooked up as well. This is the part I wanted.

If such things can actually work in the initramfs stage, then I could
probably get that working to. If such things are impossible, lemme know
now, coz I can do the impossible, so long as I know it's impossible
first. Sometimes. B-)

My goal with this sound stuff is to make a Devuan spin I'll call EARS,
for music production. But I have worked with blind Linux users in the
past, so I'm aware of how useful getting it to speak is.

--
A big old stinking pile of genius that no one wants
coz there are too many silver coated monkeys in the world.