Re: use of Recommends by vlc to force users to use pipewire
On 2022-05-30 10:43:58 +0200, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> On 2022-05-28 10:41:34 +0200, Sebastian Ramacher wrote:
> > On 2022-05-28 01:27:13 +0200, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> > > On 2022-05-27 12:34:26 +0100, Simon McVittie wrote:
> [...]
> > > > That's needed for Bluetooth audio, *if* you are using Pipewire for audio,
> > > > which (as a distribution) we are not yet aiming to do. It isn't needed
> > > > (or useful) if you are only using Pipewire as a video multiplexer.
> > >
> > > The issue appeared automatically with the upgrade of the vlc package.
> > >
> > > > pipewire-pulse should probably have a Recommends on libspa-0.2-bluetooth,
> > > > if people consider Bluetooth audio to be sufficiently important to
> > > > justify that (of course, every critical feature for one user is considered
> > > > "bloat" by someone else, so we can't win). pipewire probably shouldn't,
> > > > until such time as we are ready to recommend Pipewire as a replacement
> > > > for PulseAudio.
> > >
> > > So why did Sebastian Ramacher reassign bug 1011035 to pipewire?
> > >
> > > https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1011035#22
> >
> > If pipewire-pulse is the better place for this relationship, feel free
> > to reassign it.
>
> My comment was on "until such time as we are ready to recommend
> Pipewire as a replacement for PulseAudio". If Debian is not ready
> to use Pipewire as a replacement for PulseAudio, then VLC shouldn't
> try to use Pipewire by default instead of PulseAudio. So that would
> be a bug in VLC.
Let me clear this up a bit:
* vlc does not use pipewire by default. vlc always has included multiple
audio output plugins. vlc-plugin-base (which vlc depends on) installs
plugins for alsa, pulseaudio and others. vlc then tries to auto-detect
the most suitable audio plugin. If it detects pulseaudio, it will use
the pulseaudio plugin, etc.
Now, if vlc-plugin-pipewire is installed, it will also check if
pipewire is running as sound server and prefer that over the
pulseaudio plugin.
Users have always been able to override the audio output via the
command line or vlc's settings.
* bin:vlc aims to give a suitable default installation for desktop use.
It depends on the plugins that I deem absolutly necessary for typical
desktop usage (video output plugins, hardware decoding plugins, access
plugins, the Qt UI plugin, ...). vlc recommends plugin packages
which have additional access plugins, video processing plugins, etc
that are not necessary for the core functionality but users might
expect or improve the vlc experience. Furthermore, it suggest plugins
for more specialiced use-cases.
If users don't need or want the extended functionalities that the
recommended or suggested plugins provide, they are free to uninstall/
not install them without breaking the core functionality of (desktop)
vlc.
* As with the switch to pulseaudio many years ago, the recommended vlc
installation now provides the corresponding plugin for the switch to
pipewire. So if a user has completely switched or wants to switch to
pipewire, they get the corresponding plugin. But even if the user
doesn't switch to pipewire (or is not even using pulseaudio), they
will also have the plugins installed for that: the alsa and the
pulseaudio plugins.
Also similar to the pulseaudio switch, the new plugin is a separate
binary package at first and will sooner or later move to
vlc-plugin-base (most likely with the release of vlc 4.0).
* vlc-plugin-pipewire depends on libpipewire-0.3 and that's it. In
bookworm, I expect that more and more packages will depend on
libpipewire-0.3 - for example, see anything that does screen recording
such as obs-studio. Whether or not libpipewire-0.3 should have a
recommends-chain to pipewire-pulse is a different story, unreleated
to vlc, and is already discussed at length in other parts of this
thread.
Cheers
--
Sebastian Ramacher
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