Bug#1096138: libsdl2-dev: audio capture with pulseaudio do not work

[Simon McVittie]

Control: clone -1 -2
Control: retitle -2 libsdl3-dev: audio capture with pulseaudio does not work
Control: tags -2 fixed-upstream

On Tue, 25 Feb 2025 at 10:43:47 +0100, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote:
> Adjusting severity as this is "a bug which has a major effect on the
> usability of a package, without rendering it completely unusable to
> everyone", because everyone using SDL2 on Linux to get audio input is
> blocked from doing so until the fix is applied.

An updated libsdl2 containing your upstream change is on its way into
unstable.

Based on your test results with older versions, this regressed in unstable
and testing more than a year before anyone noticed (2.30.x has been in
testing since early February 2024), so I'm not necessarily convinced by
Severity: important for this; I'm not sure that audio capture is such a
common use-case for SDL2 as to constitute a major effect on the usability
of the package.

For SDL 3, your change to fix this is one of many bug fixes currently
only available on the git main branch. I'm not intending to upload that
as a matter of immediate urgency since I'm hoping for a new upstream
release in the near future anyway. (Cloning a bug for SDL3 to track this.)

I uploaded a git snapshot of SDL3 to experimental a few days ago, which
I'll update to a newer git snapshot including your change when time
permits, but I'd prefer not to get into uploading random git snapshots to
unstable → testing and then having the project require me to support
that arbitrary snapshot for 3 years. I hope you understand and can
tolerate this position.

I'd also prefer not to get into making judgements about which individual
bug fixes to backport (and therefore which regression risks to accept)
when I'm hoping that a new upstream release will obsolete that decision
soon anyway.

    smcv