Bug#989845: pulseaudio: Needless Depends: on libasound2-plugins should be turned back into Recommends:

[Steve Palmer]

On Thu, 29 Jul 2021 18:12:21 +0200 Dennis Filder <d.filder at web.de> wrote:

 > Using only packages depending on libpulse0 with pulseaudio is an
 > entirely valid use case (e.g. just using Firefox and a softphone on a
 > thin client). These users shouldn't have to live with a 200 MB
 > burden.

I've just come across this issue when I was building a headless 
Raspberry Pi with an attached USB speaker.  My use case involves 
networking the speaker to play sound effects like door chimes and alert 
tones.  I was installing Raspberry Pi OS Lite (no desktop) operating 
system (version 30th Oct 2021), and when installing pulseaudio, apt 
reported:

 > The following NEW packages will be installed:
 >   dbus-user-session fontconfig libaom0 libasound2-plugins libasyncns0 
libavcodec58 libavresample4 libavutil56 libcairo-gobject2 libcairo2
 >   libcodec2-0.9 libdatrie1 libdav1d4 libdrm-amdgpu1 libdrm-nouveau2 
libdrm-radeon1 libflac8 libgdk-pixbuf-2.0-0 libgdk-pixbuf2.0-bin
 >   libgdk-pixbuf2.0-common libgl1 libgl1-mesa-dri libglapi-mesa 
libglvnd0 libglx-mesa0 libglx0 libgraphite2-3 libgsm1 libharfbuzz0b libice6
 >   libjack-jackd2-0 libllvm11 libltdl7 libmp3lame0 libogg0 
libopenjp2-7 libopus0 libpango-1.0-0 libpangocairo-1.0-0 libpangoft2-1.0-0
 >   libpixman-1-0 libpulse0 libpulsedsp librsvg2-2 librsvg2-common 
libsensors-config libsensors5 libshine3 libsm6 libsnappy1v5 libsndfile1
 >   libsoxr0 libspeex1 libspeexdsp1 libswresample3 libtdb1 libthai-data 
libthai0 libtheora0 libtwolame0 libva-drm2 libva-x11-2 libva2
 >   libvdpau-va-gl1 libvdpau1 libvorbis0a libvorbisenc2 libvpx6 
libvulkan1 libwavpack1 libwayland-client0 libwebpmux3
 >   libwebrtc-audio-processing1 libx11-xcb1 libx264-160 libx265-192 
libxcb-dri2-0 libxcb-dri3-0 libxcb-glx0 libxcb-present0 libxcb-randr0
 >   libxcb-render0 libxcb-shm0 libxcb-sync1 libxcb-xfixes0 libxdamage1 
libxfixes3 libxi6 libxrender1 libxshmfence1 libxtst6 libxvidcore4
 >   libxxf86vm1 libz3-4 libzvbi-common libzvbi0 mesa-va-drivers 
mesa-vdpau-drivers mesa-vulkan-drivers ocl-icd-libopencl1 pulseaudio
 >   pulseaudio-utils rtkit shared-mime-info va-driver-all 
vdpau-driver-all x11-common
 > 0 upgraded, 107 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
 > Need to get 69.3 MB of archives.
 > After this operation, 244 MB of additional disk space will be used.

`fontconfig` was definitely a surprise!

After looking at the dependency tree, it seemed that many of these 
related to libasound2-plugins.  I know that the calculation is not this 
simple, but installing libasound2-plugins alone reported:

 > 0 upgraded, 93 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
 > Need to get 66.8 MB of archives.
 > After this operation, 235 MB of additional disk space will be used.

libasound2-plugin requires 87% or the packages and 96% of the disk 
space.  I suppose the other concern I have beyond just disk space is 
whether any of these "extras" start systemd units, so also burning RAM 
and CPU cycles on a low-power platform.

I'd vote in favour of an installation option that does not require 
libasound2-plugins.

Cheers,

Steve Palmer