openal weirdness

Hmm, so after my previous post I later noticed a strange detail on the alcGetProcAddress and alGetProcAddress functions (BTW the specification, unlike the opencl one, isn't very concise or easy to read at all): they may return per-device or per-context addresses(!?).

So rather than the routing to the correct driver that occurs transparently using OpenCL, the application must do it manually by looking up function pointers on the current context or on a given device ... although it isn't clear when which is exactly needed as some extension docs mention it, and others do not (although some function args are suggestive of which way the functions go). Further complicating matters is that the context may be set per-thread if the ALC_EXT_thread_local_context extension is available. A search on the openal archives nets a conclusion that it's a bit confusing for everyone.

Obviously java can't be looking up function pointers explicitly, so what is a neat solution?

1. When using openal-soft (i.e. any free operating system), just ignore it: that's all it does. i.e. just use the same static symbol resolution mechanism as for the core functions.
   
2. Look up the function every time - openal-soft uses a linear scan to resolve function names, so this probably isn't a good solution.
   
3. I thought of trying to use a function table which can be reset when the context changes and so on, but the thread_local_context extension makes this messy, and it's just messy anyway.
   
4. Move all extension functions to a per-extension wrapper class that loads the right pointers on instantiation. Have factory methods only available on a valid context or device depending on the extension type and associate the wrapper directly with that.

4 is probably the cleanest solution ...