Bug#627083: "recommends: jackd" is a bit weak

[Dan S]

2011/5/18 Reinhard Tartler <siretart at tauware.de>:
> On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 17:03:08 (CEST), IOhannes m zmoelnig wrote:
>
>> in short:
>> - a lot of audio-packages have jack support and thus depend on libjack
>> - installing libjack does not mean that jackd _must_ be installed (great, i like
>>   weak dependencies)
>> - however, installing libjack will not trigger an installation of jackd (due to
>>   the _very_ weak dependency), thus most installations will end up without jackd
>>   installed (that was the purpose of #442814)
>> - if the user wants to use the jack-enabled application (which they installed
>>   using apt), it will not work in most of these installations as jack cannot be
>>   started, giving a cryptic error (e.g. "/usr/bin/jackd not found"), leaving the
>>   use alone
>
> This sounds like the bug that should be fixed.
>
> As a counter example, take mplayer, which has a very broad userbase of
> which not everyone wants to run jackd. Still they require libjack
> installed because otherwise the binary would not be usable at all.
>
> Therefore the right thing to do is to make sure that applications fail
> gracefully in case the daaemon is not running or installed.

The dependencies should be able to help too though, but should be
specified in the packages themselves, no? If a piece of software
depends on jackd or pulseaudio, it specifies "Depends: jackd |
pulseaudio", and the user chooses (or doesn't need to choose, if pulse
is already there). If it can only use jackd then it "Depends: jackd".

Dan