[arch-general] PulseAudio package group

[Jan Steffens]

The problem with doing that is some packages will indeed have to
*depend* and not just optdepend on PA.

PulseAudio installs some desktop files that causes it to autostart
together with Gnome or KDE.

The PA client library will start the PA server if it's not running,
instead of failing. That means output libraries like sdl (which, by
default, tries pulse before alsa) will start the server instead of
failling back to other output methods.

gnome-media, when compiled with PulseAudio support, will be
inseparable from it. E.g., gnome-volume-control will only control
PulseAudio.

So as I see it, it would be hard to make PulseAudio part of ArchLinux
without making it mandatory.

On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 2:58 AM, Eric Bélanger <snowmaniscool at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 6:25 PM, Jan Steffens <jan.steffens at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I could make PulseAudio installation significantly easier by putting
>> specially-built packages (e.g. sdl-pulse, openal-pulse) into
>> [community] and grouping them in a "pulse" group.
>>
>> This group would also include a "pulse-asoundrc" package containing a
>> pulse-configured asound.conf, as well as depending on alsa-plugins.
>>
>> Should I go ahead with this? Any suggestions?
>>
>
> I would suggest to apply for a jr. dev position so that the pulseaudio
> stuff could be moved to extra.  That would save us from duplicating
> work by having both pulse and non-pulse packages.
>
> BTW, does adding pulse support make it a depends or optdepends? I
> would guess it depends on the package.
>