[arch-dev-public] PulseAudio in [extra]

[Stéphane Gaudreault]

Le jeudi 25 novembre 2010 16:15:33, Jan Steffens a écrit :
> On Sun, Nov 14, 2010 at 9:11 PM, Jan Steffens <jan.steffens at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I would like to propose moving support for the PulseAudio sound server
> > into Arch Linux proper. This would also be in preparation for the
> > eventual arrival of Gnome 3, since it will be unlikely we can
> > effectively maintain the needed GStreamer patch any more.
> > 
> > To that effect I have created a plan:
> > 
> > ---
> > 
> > To provide PulseAudio in [extra]...
> > 
> > Move the following packages from [community] to [extra]:
> > - libasyncns
> > - rtkit
> > - pulseaudio (split into pulseaudio and libpulse)
> > - alsa-plugins
> > - pulseaudio-alsa
> >    Configuration package, contains /etc/asound.conf
> >    depends on pulseaudio, alsa-plugins
> > - pavucontrol
> > - paprefs
> > - pulseaudio-mixer-applet
> > - ossp
> >    provides osspd OSS emulator
> > 
> > Rebuild the following packages with PulseAudio support:
> > - sdl (sdl-pulse in AUR)
> > - openal (openal-pulse in AUR)
> > - libgstreamer0.10-good
> >    split gstreamer0.10-pulse (in community)
> > - libao
> >    split libao-pulse (in community)
> > - libcanberra
> >    split libcanberra-pulse (in community)
> >    will be a split plugin instead of a wholly rebuilt copy
> > - gnome-media
> >    split gnome-media-pulse (in community; rebuilt with --enable-pulse)
> > - gnome-settings-daemon
> >    split gnome-settings-daemon-pulse (in community; rebuilt without
> > gstreamer patch)
> > 
> > Provide the following groups:
> > - pulseaudio-gnome
> >    pulseaudio-alsa
> >    libcanberra-pulse
> >    gstreamer0.10-pulse
> >    gnome-media-pulse
> >    gnome-settings-daemon-pulse
> > 
> > ---
> > 
> > One of the problems of PulseAudio is that it pretty much becomes the
> > default as soon as you install it:
> >  - The client library will start the server if it's not running.
> >  - pulseaudio will install .desktop files that autostart the server
> > together with Gnome or KDE.
> > 
> > Splitting libpulse would prevent that, but I believe we still need to
> > test on a per-application basis whether we can enable PulseAudio support
> > (with a dependency on libpulse) without breaking fallback to ALSA on
> > systems without pulseaudio.
> > 
> > Some packages (like sdl and openal) look for libpulse dynamically and
> > will still work even though the lib is missing, so they only need an
> > optional dependency.
> > 
> > I would be maintaining split -pulse packages where needed.
> 
> If there are no objections, I would move it from [testing] tomorrow.

At first I was worried about KDE, so I tested the new KDE packages in 
[testing]. 

A new dependency of phonon install libpulse (the full pulseaudio package is 
optional). After a little research and some testing I found that this libpulse 
dependency cannot be optional if we want to enable support for PA in phonon.

Since other distributions (at least Debian/Kubuntu and Fedora) are doing 
something very similar and that the use of PA in phonon is optional (alsa 
still works as expected), I would say
+1

Stéphane