Am copying to netbsd-help for parallel guru-ish guidance
on the matter of installing OSS for NetBSD. 

> We don't want our customers to think that they've 
> sunk $35.00 into OSS for nothing. We're here to help.  
> 
> The basic problem with NetBSD is that unlike FreeBSD 
> they use something called "devaudio" which is Sun's 
> Audio API and apps under the ports section for NetBSD 
> are modified from their original design to use devaudio. 
> ALL open source apps are written with the OSS API in 
> mind as they are originally developed for Linux or 
> FreeBSD which use the OSS API. 
> 
> So when you try to run apps under NetBSD, you have to 
> recompile them from source. The configure stage for 
> all audio apps will detect the OSS API if soundcard.h 
> is found in /usr/include/sys or /usr/include/machine 
> 
> Once you recompile these apps OSS audio works just fine.  
> 
> best regards
> Dev Mazumdar

I checked on that, without result, thus... 

ls /usr/include/sys | grep soundcard.h
soundcard.h
ls /usr/include/machine | grep soundcard.h
soundcard.h 

...so those files are just where they should be. So
next I tried this... 

cd /usr/pkgsrc/audio/arts
make clean
make 

...which failed with a STOP error. Because, it said,
there was a previous installation. I can't do pkg_delete
since there are a horrendous number of dependencies. I
seemed to recall that 'make update' had worked once.
I wasn't sure, so just gave that a go, thus... 

cd /usr/pkgsrc/audio/arts
make clean
make update 

...but it too failed, with errors thus (with
many lines deleted from start of command)... 

In file included from audioiooss.cc:33:
/usr/include/soundcard.h:49: warning: `SOUND_VERSION' redefined
/usr/include/sys/soundcard.h:49: warning: this is the location of the 
previous definition
(...many similar lines as above/below deleted for brevity...)
/usr/include/soundcard.h:271: warning: `OSS_GETVERSION' redefined
/usr/include/sys/soundcard.h:1208: warning: this is the location of the 
previous definition
In file included from audioiooss.cc:33:
/usr/include/soundcard.h:256: redefinition of `struct mixer_info'
/usr/include/sys/soundcard.h:1145: previous definition here
/usr/include/soundcard.h:263: redefinition of `struct _old_mixer_info'
/usr/include/sys/soundcard.h:1152: previous definition here
/usr/include/soundcard.h:273: redefinition of `struct audio_buf_info'
/usr/include/sys/soundcard.h:645: previous definition here
/usr/include/soundcard.h:280: redefinition of `struct count_info'
/usr/include/sys/soundcard.h:718: previous definition here
/usr/include/soundcard.h:286: redefinition of `struct buffmem_desc'
/usr/include/sys/soundcard.h:728: previous definition here
audioiooss.cc: In method `bool ::Arts::AudioIOOSS::open()':
audioiooss.cc:330: no matching function for call to 
`audio_buf_info::audio_buf_info ()'
/usr/include/soundcard.h:278: candidates are: 
audio_buf_info::audio_buf_info(const audio_buf_info &)
audioiooss.cc: In method `int ::Arts::AudioIOOSS::getParam(enum 
::Arts::AudioIO::AudioParam)':
audioiooss.cc:422: no matching function for call to 
`audio_buf_info::audio_buf_info ()'
/usr/include/soundcard.h:278: candidates are: 
audio_buf_info::audio_buf_info(const audio_buf_info &)
gmake[3]: *** [audioiooss.lo] Error 1
gmake[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/pkgsrc/audio/arts/work/arts-1.0.2/flow'
gmake[2]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
gmake[2]: Leaving directory `/usr/pkgsrc/audio/arts/work/arts-1.0.2/flow'
gmake[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
gmake[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/pkgsrc/audio/arts/work/arts-1.0.2'
gmake: *** [all] Error 2
*** Error code 2 

Stop.
*** Error code 1 

Stop.
*** Error code 1 

Stop. 

...And also, I did a complete pkg_delete, make clean, make
and make install of /usr/pkgsrc/audio/audacity. All went
without any errors. But audacity still will not play.  Still
gives the same error for /dev/sound as before. 

What to do now? OSS works fine by iteslf. The OSS CLI things
run fine. But ALL other audio apps fail with errors about
the mixer or /dev/sound. 

Regards, 

Gan