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+# Pulseaudio 4A (AGL Advanced Audio Agent) Client Module
+
+This module allows pulseaudio to work as a client of the AGL Advanced Audio Agent.
+
+## Dependencies
+
+#### libafbwsc
+This library is used to communicate with AFB (Application Framework Binder),
+the interface that is being used by 4A.
+
+#### libsystemd
+This is needed for the systemd event loop implementation which is a hard
+requirement of libafbwsc.
+
+#### json-c
+This is needed for json message parsing, also a hard requirement of libafbwsc.
+
+## Building
+
+This is meant to be built as part of the AGL distribution, using its bitbake
+recipe. It depends on an AGL-specific patch on pulseaudio that installs the
+module development headers on the system. On other distributions the source
+files of this repository should be copied into the pulseaudio source tree
+and pulseaudio's build system should be adjusted accordingly.
+
+## Operation
+
+* module-4a-client initially calls ahl-4a/get_roles to retrieve the available
+roles in 4a
+* When a new sink-input appears, it uses its media.role property and the
+available roles to figure out which role it should use
+* if the role turns out to be empty, it uses the default_role parameter to
+assign a role to it
+* it calls ahl-4a/<role> {"action": "open"} to open the device and get an ALSA
+device uri
+* it loads module-alsa-sink with the device uri set to whatever ahl-4a returned
+* if all goes well, it moves the new sink-input to this new alsa sink
+* otherwise it takes no action and expects pulseaudio configuration to be set
+up in such a way so that the sink-input is muted
+* when the sink-input disappears, it unloads the relevant module-alsa-sink
+instance and calls ahl-4a/<role> {"action": "close"} to close the device in 4A
+
+## Configuration
+
+module-4a-client is recommended to be loaded from pulseaudio's default.pa config
+file and it should be loaded in combination with a null sink:
+
+```
+load-module module-null-sink sink_name=aaaa_null_sink sink_properties="device.description='4A Null Output'"
+set-default-sink aaaa_null_sink
+load-module module-4a-client
+```
+
+This is because it expects that all new clients will automatically connect
+to a sink that is not one of the sinks that it loads internally.
+
+Additionally, for correct operation, it should **not** be loaded together
+with one of the following:
+
+* module-alsa-card
+* module-udev-detect
+* module-detect
+* module-default-device-restore
+* module-role-cork
+
+... or anything else that might automatically load new sinks, move
+clients on other sinks and alter stream volumes (volumes are meant to
+be handled by 4A, pulseaudio should be dummy in this usage scenario)
+
+### Parameters
+
+The module accepts two parameters, both optional.
+
+* 'uri' - The URI of the socket that will be used to talk to ahl-4a.
+Defaults to 'unix:/run/user/0/apis/ws/ahl-4a'
+
+* 'default_role' - The name of the role that will be used as a fallback for
+clients that do not specify 'media.role'. Defaults to 'multimedia'
+
+## Testing
+
+Save this example configuration in a file called config.pa:
+```
+#!/usr/bin/pulseaudio -nF
+
+.fail
+
+load-module module-augment-properties
+load-module module-native-protocol-unix
+
+load-module module-null-sink sink_name=aaaa_null_sink sink_properties="device.description='4A Null Output'"
+set-default-sink aaaa_null_sink
+load-module module-4a-client
+
+load-module module-rescue-streams
+load-module module-always-sink
+load-module module-suspend-on-idle
+```
+
+Start pulseaudio with the above example config:
+```
+# pulseaudio -nF config.pa
+...
+```
+
+In another terminal:
+```
+# gst-launch-1.0 audiotestsrc ! pulsesink stream-properties="p,media.role=(string)emergency"
+```
+
+You can substitute "emergency" with any other available role, or just omit the
+whole stream-properties=... part to get assigned the default role ("multimedia")
+
+## Missing functionality
+
+The following functionality still needs to be implemented:
+
+* Handle source-outputs in the same way as sink-inputs
+* Cork sink-inputs that have been denied access to the device, so that the
+client can act on it.
+* Enforce security requirements - no other client should be allowed to
+connect to the internally loaded alsa sinks
+* Propagate the SMACK label of clients to 4A - this is supposed to allow 4A
+to restrict which clients are allowed to output audio