Bug#1029648: gnome-core 1:43+1 not installable with Pulseaudio

[Dylan Aïssi]

Hello,

Le mer. 25 janv. 2023 à 22:13, Simon McVittie <smcv at debian.org> a écrit :
>
> Pipewire maintainers: do you have an opinion on whether gnome-core should
> return to depending on the individual dependencies of pipewire-audio,
> rather than on the metapackage?

I intentionally marked pipewire-audio in conflict with pulseaudio even if there
is no technical reason for that (here I have both pulseaudio and pipewire-pulse
installed without any issue). The reason of this metapackage and its conflict
with pulseaudio is because for different reasons, users complained and filled
bugs about broken configs. The origins of these broken configs are differents
and not related to the pipewire packages. For example, it could be because they
didn't install the recommended packages (wireplumber without pipewire-pulse), or
because some packages where pinned leading to a non-functional combination of
packages. Some others followed outdated guides from random websites to switch
from pulseaudio to pipewire with as result weird conflicts with pulseaudio.
The aim of this package is to avoid common users mistakes leading to no audio.
I am annoyed for them since pipewire-pulse just works but because I have limited
time, I cannot figure what they did wrong for all of them.

I don't have a strong opinion whether gnome-core should depend on pipewire-audio
or on individual dependencies. If they follow the recommendation an upgrade from
Bullseye to Bookworm without having to conflict on pulseaudio will work
correctly. So, maybe would be better to have gnome-core not depending on
pipewire-audio to not hurt users who still want to use pulseausio leaving
optional pipewire-audio (and its conflict with pulseaudio). After all, users
complaining about a pkg conflicts between pipewire and pulseaudio had no real
reason (excepted [1]) to keep both installed just because I guess they were a
bit prudent about this transition.

[1] https://bugs.debian.org/1029377#20

> I'm not sure that I understand why pipewire-alsa and pipewire-audio need
> to conflict with pulseaudio. Would it be sufficient to rename
> /etc/alsa/conf.d/99-pipewire-default.conf to sort later than 99-pulse.conf,
> or ask the pulseaudio maintainers to rename /etc/alsa/conf.d/99-pulse.conf
> to sort slightly earlier? That would restore the older behaviour in which
> installing both pulseaudio and the equivalent of pipewire-audio is possible,
> and Pipewire "wins"?

Yes, that is correct. It's not implemented just because nobody asked for it.

> On Wed, 25 Jan 2023 at 15:10:52 -0500, Rann Bar-On wrote:
>
> I think this is a probem!
>
>> Please clarify why this is a problem?
>
> Given the above, my opinion has changed.

We are lacking pedagogy on that. Not sure how we can communicate more on the
pulseaudio to pipewire transition. At least, I will have to refresh the Debian
pipewire wiki page before the release of Bookworm.

> Maybe. I prefer cleaning up packages, so if something is inactive by
> necessity, I think it should be removed.

This is solved by the (optional?) pipewire-audio package which will ensure that
pulseaudio is removed.

Best regards,
Dylan