[Debian-med-packaging] Bug#998754: praat: libasound2-plugins package needed to record in praat

[Rafael Laboissière]

Control: tags -1 moreinfo

* Castedo Ellerman <castedo at castedo.com> [2021-11-07 17:00]:

> Package: praat
> Version: 6.1.38-1
> Severity: normal
> X-Debbugs-Cc: castedo at castedo.com
>
> Dear Maintainer,
>
> The praat package does not list libasound2-plugins as a dependency. But in 
> order to record sounds in an environment with PulseAudio, I believe it is 
> required. The libasound2-plugins package contains a plugin for: 
>  'pulse: play or capture via Pulse Audio'.
>
> When installing praat (bullseye) inside a container, I discovered that it was 
> necessary to also install the libasound2-plugins package in order for recording 
> of sound to work in praat.
>
> This is unusual environment: a Linux (docker) container with no sound card but 
> with a PulseAudio domain socket available. Perhaps the responsibility is on the 
> user of such an environment to make sure that libasound2-plugins is already 
> installed. On the other hand, praat does take advantage of the plugin installed 
> by libasound2-plugins and this makes possible recording functionality that 
> otherwise does not work (albeit a corner case environment).
>
> I'm happy to provide more details on the container environment.

Praat in Debian can perfectly record sounds from the microphone without 
the libasound2-plugins package installed. Of course, a sound card is 
needed for that.

At any rate, it would be convenient to be able to do recordings in the 
corner case that you describe (i.e. without sound card but with a 
PulseAudio domain socket available).

However, I dislike the idea of forcing the dependency on 
libasound2-plugins. Do you think that Suggests would be enough?

Best,

Rafael Laboissière