[arch-general] Firefox 52 Audio broken

[jjgaris]

On Tue, Mar 07, 2017 at 12:48:59PM +0100, Bartłomiej Piotrowski wrote:
> On 2017-03-07 10:26, jjgaris via arch-general wrote:
> > On Tue, Mar 07, 2017 at 07:00:12PM +1000, Allan McRae wrote:
> >> On 07/03/17 18:29, jjgaris via arch-general wrote:
> >>> Since the update to firefox 52 the audio support has been broken.
> >>> This seems to be because pulse audio is now a dependency by default in firefox.
> >>> However firefox can still be build with ALSA support.
> >>>
> >>> Without getting into any dicussion about issues about pulseaudio itself, I believe it should be possible to use firefox on arch without being forces to use pulse 
> >>> audio. I am certainly not the only one to have banned this package from my boxes. And having more choices is certainly a good thing.
> >>>
> >>> Not sure this is the right place but I would like to ask to change back to the old defaults (ALSA). 
> >>> With the old defaults, the user can choose to use pulse audio (or JACK) or stay with plain ALSA support.
> >>>
> >>
> >> Upstream changed to pulseaudio by default. Arch follows upstream
> >>
> >> You can compile firefox yourself to set it being alsa only.
> >>
> >> A
> > 
> > Building firefox takes hours making this not really an option for many users.
> > Arch has deviated before from the upstream default, I see no reason why we should follow upstream by restricting the 
> > choice of the user.
> > 
> 
> Convince upstream to bring Alsa back as default. That's pretty much EOT
> from anyone involved into packaging in Arch.
> 
> BP
> 


There is no reason to restrict the use of audio servers because upstream uses a hard dependency by default.

A lot of work and time has been spend by a lot of people to build alternative audioservers (like JACK) and enable them 
to be used by firefox. This work is pretty much wasted if arch prevents users from choosing their own audio servers. The 
possibility of compiling the software ourselfs won't change that since very few will/can do that.

One solution I could think of is an alternative firefox package (not in AUR) that still allows users to make their own 
choice. Would that be a possibility?