[Pkg-alsa-devel] Bug#691279: libasound2-plugins: libasoun2-plugins need multi-arch support or else alsa applications will conflict with pulseaudio

[Thiago Bellini]

Package: libasound2-plugins
Version: 1.0.25-2
Severity: important

Dear Maintainer,

I have Wheezy running on amd64. When a multi-arch application uses alsa to
output sound (e.g. wine:i386), a problem happens if another applications is
using pulseaudio.

Ex. Running a game on wine without any other application outputing sound will
have no problems (wine outputs audio ok). If another application is running and
outputing sound with pulseaudio (rhythmbox for example), the game starts muted.

Digging a little, I found that applications outputing sound on alsa that are
not multiarch (not :i386), they run in a wrapper that ends in pulseaudio, and
so they can be outputted together without problems. But since there's no
package for libasound2-plugins on multiarch, this problem is happening.

So, IMHO, if libasound2-plugins gets multiarch support, this problem should not
happen anymore.

Searching for the problem, I found this Ubuntu's bug [1] that I think is
related.

Here is the output when trying to install libasound2-plugins on :i386:
hackedbellini at bellini-pc:~$ sudo apt-get install libasound2-plugins:i386
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 libasound2-plugins:i386 : Depends: libavcodec53:i386 (>= 6:0.8.2-2) but it is
not going to be installed or
                                    libavcodec-extra-53:i386 (>= 6:0.8.2-2) but
it is not going to be installed
                           Depends: libavutil51:i386 (>= 6:0.8.2-2) but it is
not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

[1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/825342



-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-3-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages libasound2-plugins depends on:
ii  libasound2                        1.0.25-4
ii  libavcodec53                      6:0.8.3-7
ii  libavutil51                       6:0.8.99-1537-gacb2c79-2
ii  libc6                             2.13-35
ii  libjack-jackd2-0 [libjack-0.116]  1.9.8~dfsg.4+20120529git007cdc37-4.1
ii  libpulse0                         2.0-6
ii  libsamplerate0                    0.1.8-5
ii  libspeexdsp1                      1.2~rc1-6
ii  multiarch-support                 2.13-35

libasound2-plugins recommends no packages.

libasound2-plugins suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information